I' 

I 



4t:3i 



rasMSMiMM' 






1| 



■^\1 








l^^\ 



HiilMi 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
^nf inp^rig]^ '^a 

:\'-: 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



\ 



'V 



V 



Treasury of Irish Eloquence, 




REV OR CAHILL. 



TEEASUET 

OF 

Irish Eloquence, 



BEING A COMPENDIUM OF 



lEISH OMTOM AND LITEMTUEE, 

COMPILED WITH ANNOTATIONS FROM 

Thos. Davis, Dr. McNeyen, Dr. Madden, J. Bnrke, and others, 

CONSISTING OF SPEECHES OF 

EDMUISTD BURKE, CHARLES PHILLIPS, 

HENRY GRATTAN, DANIEL O'CONNELL, 

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, RICHARD LALOR SHEIL, 

ROBERT EMMET, THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE, 

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER, A. M. SULLIVAN, 

RICH'D BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, MICHAEL DAVITT, 

i 

WITH LECTURES, SERMONS, AND LETTERS OF 

DR. CAHILL, VERY REV. THOMAS N. BUHKE, 

EEV. BERNARD BUCKLEY, ARCHBISHOP McHALE, 
RT. REV. THOMAS NULTY. 



Illwstrntjli toiil] |lunuows |0rtraits, ^tms, ik,^ 



SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. /^^^coi^*''".>i';^%> 






BOSTON, MASS.: ., ^^^ ., 



^1 



COPYBIGHT, 1S82, 

By murphy & MCCARTHY. 



DnrPT, Cashman Co., Printers, 
Fayelto Court, Boston 



Treasury of Irish Eloquence. 



PEELIMINARY. 

Some one has said, "the voice of eloquence is sweeter than the 
voice of song." It was a well-spoken tribute to the power of an art, 
lieavenly in the magic of its inspiration, superior to music's charms 
in thrilling the ear, and privileged to sway by conviction the reason 
of the soul. In presence of its mighty influence, we must recognize 
the omnipotence and efficaciousness of that highest eloquence, bora 
of pure and lofty ideas, of religious and patriotic feelings, and of 
noble and generous sentiments. Good ideas, eloquently expressed, 
conduce essentially to the intellectual elevation of every community. 
To meet the necessities of a higher education, and needs of an appre- 
ciative people, we advance this compilation, presenting specimen gems 
of the most beautiful in oratory and literature. We have long felt the 
want of a book of Irish eloquence, wherein could be found collected 
stray pieces, models of their kind, scattered throughout the lil)raries 
and elocutionary works of our land. In this volume, replete with 
emanations of genius and fervency from the pulpit and tribune, with 
flashes from the pen of the patriot and scholar, the youth of the 
countr^^the students and admirers of an exalted oratorical literature, 
and the friends and devotees of Christianity and Ireland everywhere, 
may contemplate treasures of eloquence endowed with a national and 
religious character. For ages, the religion and patriotism of the 
children of Ireland, have found utterance in a wonderful and emotional 
tongue ; nor is it in the province of a far more gifted pen, to convey 

(V) 



YJ TKEASUKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

to our readers' miuds, an adequate idea of the grandeur of the elo- 
quence of Ireknd, descended from the lone talent of a distant age, 
"when but one oasis bloomed amid the desert of intellectual darkness, 
and that one, Ireland ; gleaming through centuries of unparalleled 
wrong and oppression, startling the world with its splendor, melting 
humanity to tears, personating an irresistible genius, and bi-aving the 
tempests of tyranny and time, but to glow with a brilliancy reinforced 
by the progressiveness of the hour in which we live. To Iieland — 
mai'tyred motherland — we look for that soulful and impassioned, 
eloquence that springs from patriotic devotion, and is begotten of 
the sufferings of a crushed but unconquei'ed nation ; and to the one 
apostolical church we turn for the words of sublime and solemn inspi- 
ration that lift the soul to heaven and liberty. It can bo sublimely 
said of the oratory of Ireland, that, while advocating the claims of 
catholic liberty, it was not confined to the utterances of one kind of 
religionists, for it fell from men's lips whose highest belief lay in the 
religion of justice, whose loftiest mission was the redemption of 
brother men, and whose most orthodox inspiration came from th& 
God-given principle of universal liberty and man's equality. 

One, among the many great ones, must ever remain unforgotten, 
wherever in the wide world heroism is honored. In our country's 
school-readers may be found !i model of eloquence, framed from the 
lips of the patriot-martyr of 1803, from which the scholar for all 
time may learn his first lesson of manhood and patriotism. Preem- 
inent in the grandeur of their devotion and conception, translated 
into every living tongue, the burning words of Eobert Emmet, in 
the face of death, deep graven on the hearts of Irishmen and free- 
dom-worshippers, will remain forever, though he who spoke them 
met a felon's doom — for he died for his fellow-men, that they might 
live happy in the sunshine of liberty, — asking, as a dying wish, that 
his "epitaph might not be written till his country should take her 
place among the nations of the earth." Soon shall the earnest trib- 
ute of a nation redeemed, illumine that unwritten epitaph. 



PRELIMINARY. y^ 

No lover of the sublime in classic or sacred oratory, can refuse 
the homage of his appreciation to that island, that alone, amid the 
nations, has reproduced the Cicero and Demosthenes of his dreams, 
in a Curran and a Grattan, and gave to the world a pulpit-eloquence 
outstripping Massillon, in the discourses of a Father Tom Burke. 
No eulogium of ours is needed to chai'acterize the eloquence of the 
illustrious agitator, Daniel 0"Connell. But why particularize ? It 
would require almost interminable space and time to call the roll of 
that prodigious galaxy of genius, which has extended to every clime, 
covered every emergency, and excited the admiration of the world. 
The immortal Henry Clay, and Prentiss of Mississippi, have declai-ed 
that "Ireland has furnished more than her share to the world of 
genius and talent and heroism," and history contirms that declara- 
tion. 

Our readei's may here find the oratorical splendor of Grattan ; the 
rhetorical grace of Curran, Phillips, Shell, and Sheridan ; the logical 
fluency of Cahill, Burke, McHale, and Nulty ; the popular oratory of 
Daniel O'Connell ; the pulpit-eloquence of Father Tom Burke, Ber- 
nard Buckley, and others ; Emmet's Dying Speech ; the patriotic 
brilliancy of "Meagher of the Sword," McGee, A. M. Sullivan, 
and last, but not least, the indefatigable agitator who, allied to the 
indomitable Charles Stewart Parnell, may be caUed the founder of 
The Irish National Land League, Michael Davitt. 

We hope the choice of the selections may be acceptable to our 
numerous readers ; and closing this labor of affection, we pray that 
the dissemination of these treasures of eloquence among the people 
of our country, may produce a bountiful harvest of good ideas, a 
beauty of expression, and an appreciation of the sublime in oratory ; 
besides engendering in the youthful mind a higher ambition for 
learning, and an inclination for a higher order of reading in time to 
come. Present and unborn representatives of the Irish race may 
look up to these examples of national genius, and feel proud of a 
fatherland redeemed from centuries of adversity, by the intellectual 



Yiii TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

superiority of its sons. May the man of letters read, and drink in 
the logical brilliancy and rhetorical grandeur of its pages. May the 
student draw from its unfailing fountain, the essence of his noblest 
theme. May the scorner and the bigot here learn his misconception 
of a people's character, and, above all, may those to whom it is 
entrusted as a sacred and honored relic of fatherland, ponder it 
deeply, cherish it proudly, and quote it effectually on the occasion 
of its utterance. May the oratory of Ireland and the primitive 
church ever animate the generations of our race, and serve to advance 
their amelioration, until all national and religious aspirations arc 
.fumUod. 

P. R. M. 

Pko\tdf.xce, K. I. (Emmet Anniversary), March i, 1S82. 



Contents. 



Eet. D. W. Cahill, D. D. : Page 
Address delivered at Glasgow, at the anniversary dinner, on St. 

Patrick's day, 3 

The Fidelity of Ireland in defence of her Liberties and her Ancient 
Religion : Lecture delivered at the Academy of Music, New 

York, March 17, 1860, 21 

Immaculate Conception, 43 

Last Judgment, 67 

Dr. Cahill to five Protestant Clergymen, 75 

Letter of Dr. Cahill, to the Right Hon. the Earl of Derby, . . 84 

Key. Michael Bernard Buckley: 

Panegyric on St. Finbar, Patron Saint of the Diocese of Cork, . . 99 

Sermon on the Profession of a Nun, 114 

Sermon on the Blessed Virgin Mary, 122 

Lecture on the National Music of Ireland, 131 

Lecture on John Philpot Curran, 159 

The Irish Character Analyzed, 181 

Vert Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O. P. : 

Answers to Froude. First Lecture delivered in the Academy of 

Music, New York, November 12, 1872, 203 

Second Lecture, delivered in the Academy of ]\Iusic, New York, 

November 14, 1872, 231 

Third Lecture, delivered in the Academy of Music, Njw York, 

November 19, 1872, 251 

Fourth Lecture . 269 

Filth Lecture, 287 



CONTENTS. 



Hon. John Philpot Cueran: 

Speech on Attaclimeiits,Fcbruary 24, 1785, .... 

Speech on Orde's Commercial Propositions, June 30, 1785, 

Speech on Pensions, March 13, 1786, . 

On Stamp Officers' Salaries, February 4, 1790, . 

On Government Corruption, February 12th, 1791, 

On Catholic Emancipation, February 18, 1792, . 

In defence of Rev. William Jackson, April 23, 1795, 

Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, October 14, 1796, 

Last Speech in the Irish House of Commons, May 15, 1797, 

For Peter Finnerty, Publisher of the " Press," December 22, 1797, 



Page 
315 
321 
335 
339 
345 
365 
362 
376 
379 



Hon. Richard Lalor Shell : 

Clare Election, 423 

Repeal of the Union, 457 

Orange Lodges, 479 

Irish Municipal Bill, February 22, 1837, 487 

The Irish Catholics. Speech at Peaendcn Heath, October 24, 1828, . 505 

Speech in I'eply to Mr. McClintock, 517 

Speech on the Duke of York, 629 

Hon. Henry Grattan: 

Declaration of Irish Rights, April 19, 1780 639 

Philippic against Flood, October 28, 1783, 556 

Commercial Propositions, April 12, 1785, 561 

Anti-Union Speeches, January 16, 1800, 572 

Anti-Union Speeches, May 26, 1800, 695 

Invective against Corry, February 14, 1800, 611 

Daniel O'Connell, M. P. : 

Speech at Limerick, 1812, 618 

Speech in the British Catholic Association on the Defeat of the 

Emancipation Bill, May 26, 1825, 630 

Speech on the Treaty of Limerick, .... . . 647 

Speech at the second Clare Election, 659 

Speech at Mullaghmast Monster Meeting, September, 1843, , . 666 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



Charles Phillips, Esq.: page 

A Speech delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr. Finley by the 

Roman Catholics of the Town and County of Sligo, . . . 677 

A Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Roman Catho- 
lics of Cork, 688 

Speech delivered at a Dinner given on Dinas Island, in the Lake of 
Killarney, on Mr. Phillips' health being given together with 
that of Mr. Payne, a young American, ..... 699 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Roman Catholics 

of the County and City of Dublin, 704 

Hon. Edmund Burke: 

Speech on American Taxation, April 19th, 1774, .... 725 
Speech on taking leave of the Electors of Bristol, .... 775. 
Select Passages on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, . . 77& 

His Grace the Most Rev. Dr McHale, Archbishop of Tuam : 

To the Most Rev. Dr. Manners, Protestant Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, Primate of all England : The Question of Divorce between 

George IV. and his Queen, 791 

To the Most Rev. Wm. Magee, D. D., Protestant Archbishop of 

Dublin, 799 

Dr. McHale's Letter to Lord Bexley, 806 

To the Protestant Archbishop of Tuam, 814 

Christmas Day at the Vatican, 818 

Letter from Rome : Visit to the Pope. A Manuscript Letter of 

Mary Queen of Scots. The Tombs of O'Neil and O'Donnell, etc., 824 

A. M. Sullivan, M. P.: 

Address delivered by A. M. Sullivan, M. P., in his own defence, in 

Green Street Court-House, Dublin, February 20, 1868, . . 833 

Richard Brinslet Sheridan: 

Speech delivered in Opposition to Pitt's first income tax, . . . 859 

Robert Emmet: 

Powerful address of Robert Emmet, delivered at his trial before 

Lord Norbury, Sept. 19, 1803, 869 



Xii CONTENTS. 

Michael Davitt: paoe 

Future Policy of Irish Nationalists, 879 

Thomas Fkancis Meaghee: 

Speech at Conciliation Hall, Dublin, July 28, 1846, .... 897 

Thomas D'Arct McGee: 

Speech before the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society, Quebec, 

May, 1862, 907 

Eight Rev. T. Nultt, D. D. Bishop op Meath: 

To Joseph Cowen, M. P., Newcastle-on- Tyne 913 



ADDRESSES, LECTURES and SERMONS. 



Rev, D, W, Cahill. 



[1] 



Rev, Dr. Cahill's Address, 

Deliyered at Glasgow, at the Anniversary Dinner on 
St. Patrick's Dat. 



^^R. CHAIE^MAN and beloved Fellow-Countryimen, — I do 
^^j^ believe there is no nation in the world aljle to shout 

r'% with the Irish. Our countryman, Dean Swift, counselled 
the Irish people, in his day, not to make speeches at public 
meetings, for fear of the Attorney General. " Do not speak," said 
he, "when you meet, as the law may punish you: but there is no 
law against shouting, — hence, groan and shout." And from that 
day to this, we can groan and shout better than any people in the 
whole world. Till I came here on this evening, I thought I could 
never forgive either Lord J. Russell or Lord Palmerston ; but the 
speakers who have preceded me have inflicted such a castigation on 
them, that, with your kind permission, I will forgive them, — not in 
this world, — but in the next. For this purpose, I must have the 
key of the Kingdom of Heaven, and also the key of the other place, 
in order that, when I first let them out, I can next let them in. 

Mr. Chairman, you have exaggerated my small services in refer- 
ence to the pul)lic letters which I have written. Whatever merit I 
may have, consisted in my knowing well the history of Ireland. 
The history of other countries is learned from the cool pen of the 
historian, but that of Ireland is learned from the crimsoned tombs 
of the dead. The history of other nations is collected from the 
growing population and successful commerce, but the sad story of 
Ireland is gathered from the deserted village, the crowded jjoor- 
house, and the mournful swelling canvas of the emigrant ship. You 
gave me too much credit for those slender productions of mine, and 



4 TREASUEY CF ELOQUENCE. 

perhaps you are not aware that it was on the graves of the starved 
and shroudless victims of English misrule I stood when I indited the 
epistles. I dated them from the grave-pits of Sligo and the fever- 
sheds of Skibl)ereen. If I seemed to weep, it was because I fol- 
lowed to coflinless tombs tens of thousands of my poor, persecuted 
fellow-countrymen ; and if my descriptions appeared tinged with 
red, it was because I dipped mj'^ pen in their fresh bleeding graves 
in order to give suitable coloring to the terrific page on which a cruel 
fate has traced the destinies of Ireland. It was not my mind but my 
bosom that dictated ; it was not my pen but my heart that wrote the 
record. 

And where is the Irishman who would not feel an involuntary 
impulse of national pride in asserting the invincible genius of our 
own creed while he gazes on the crumbling walls of our ancient 
churches, which, even in their old age, lift their hoary heads as faith- 
ful witnesses of the past struggles of our fiiith, and still stand iu 
their massive frame-work, resisting to the last the power of the 
despoiler, and scarcely yielding to the inevitable stroke of time? 
And where is the heart so cold, that would not pour forth a boiling 
torrent of national anger at seeing the children of forty generations 
consigned to a premature grave, or banished by cruel laws to seek 
amongst the strangers the protection they are refused at home ? 

Nature does not deny a home to the untutored savage that wanders 
naked over her boundless domain ; even the maternal genius of the 
inhospitable forest gives a welcome asylum to her young ; she brings 
them forth from her bare womb, suckles them on her stormy bosom, 
and feeds them at her desert streams. She teaches them to kneel 
beneath the dark canopy with which she shrouds the majesty of her 
inaccessible rocks ; she warns them to flee from danger in the moan- 
ing voice of the unchained tempests, and she clothes her kingdom 
in verdure and sunlight to cheer them in their trackless home. Well 
has the divine heail of Campbell given a preference to the savage 
beast over the ill-fated lot of the exiled Irishman, in these immortal 
lines which express the history of our nation : — 

" Where is ray cabin door fast by the wildwood, 
Where is my sire that wept for its fall? 
Where is the mother that watched o'er my childhood ? 
Where is my bosom friend, dearer than all? 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 5 

' Sad is my fate,' said the heart-broken stranger, 

' The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee ; 

But I have no refuge from famine and danger, 

A home and a country remain not for me.' " 

Oh ! if St. Patrick were now to visit Ireland, what changes could 
not the historian recount to him since he first set his Apostolic foot 
on the soil? For many centuries after he died, Ireland enjoyed a 
profound peace and a national prosperity. While, on the fall of the 
Roman Empire, most of the kingdoms of Europe rose up in vindi- 
cation of their national rigiits, and all the neighboring nations were 
filled with the disastrous accompaniments and results of war, Ireland 
cultivated the arts and sciences, and practised the sublime pi-ecepts 
of the Gospel to perfection. She was the seminary M'here Europe 
was then educated, and whatever progress has been made by them 
in lettei-s and religion, they must own that they lighted the torch of 
Science and Faith at the sacred fires which burned on the altars of 
Ireland. No doubt, a storm has in later daj's been evoked from the 
abyss by the emissaries of Satan against this ancient creed. It has 
burst over Ireland with an awful violence, and in its devastating 
passage over our fine country it has blown down the venerable insti- 
tutions of past ages ; it has rent the monarch oak which crowned 
the forest with its lofty majesty, but the trunk and the roots were 
too strong to be torn by the rage of the hurricane ; and here we are, 
the new growth of the flourishing branches sprung from the old stock, 
and likely to rise higher, and to sjiread farther than the parent tree, 
which, three centui'ies ago, reached to the skies over Ireland. 

In fact. Catholicity, if I may so speak, is almost natural to an 
Irishman. He is, as it wei'e, a Chi-istian before he is baptized; he 
inherits faith by a kind of freehold grace which St. Patrick has 
bequeathed to the most remote posterity of Ireland. You can effiice 
every feeling from his heart but Catholicity ; you can crush out every 
sentiment from his mind but the love of his altai-s ; you m-iy break him 
into pieces, and crush him into dust, but like the diamond in frag- 
ments, faith shines in him to the last. The smallest particle of the 
Irish nature — the poorest, the most abandoned of Ireland's sons, — 
reveals the sparkling inheritance as well as the most noble and lordly 
possessor ; in fact, the darkness of the night is more favorable for 
seeing the native light of the fragment, than the goldeu hours of 



Q TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

noonday sunshine ; and thus the midnight of national trial is the best 
time to behold the ctrulgenee of Ireland's creed, and to test the 
essential splendor of her national faith. Or, as our own bard has 
it, — 

" The gem may be broke by many a stroke, 
But nothing can cloud its native ray, 
Each fragment will cast a light to the last ; 

And thus Erin, my country, though broken thou art, 
There's a lustre within thee that ne'er can decay, 

A spirit that breathes through each suffering part. 
And smiles at thy pain ou St. Patrick's Day." 

No doubt, you have heard the amusing feet of the Irish in a 
certain town in England, when, in 1850, they proceeded there to 
burn the Blessed Virgin in effigy. When all was ready for the 
idolatrous conflagration, the Irish were seen collecting in patches of 
tens and twenties, in the square where the fagots were prepared. 
The police observed that each Irishman had a short, thick stick 
thrust up the sleeve of his jacket ; and on asking what use they 
intended to make of these dangerous weapons in the present in- 
stance, one of the Irish said — "Why then, your honor, we were 
afraid you might not have wood enough to burn the Virgin out and 
out, and we brought these few Icippeens, asthore, to keep up the 
blaze." It is unnecessary to say that the Virgin was not burned on 
that day ; and the Irish on returning home, were heard saying to 
each other — na boc?dish, avick. 

As your chairman has given me credit for having some knowledge 
of astronomy, I must take the liberty of informing the people of 
Scotland that the length of the day and night in Ireland is twenty- 
four hours, and that it was twelve o'clock noon, in our colonies in 
the east, at about four o'clock this morning in Ireland ; and again, 
that about this present hour, while we are filling our si^arkling 
glasses, the Irish are just going to Mass, with the shamrocks in 
their hats, at twelve o'clock in America. The Irish soldier, there- 
fore, on this morning, at four o'clock, saluted the glorious memory 
of St. Patrick at the mouth of the Ganges ; he began the shout in 
the east as the sun culmiu\ited over Pekin , and as the day advanced, 
and that shout rolled along the foot of Himalaya, it swept across 
the Indus, passed over the track of Alexander the Great, was heard 
in ancient Byzantium, disturbed the slumber of the sleeping brave 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 7 

in the gray field of Marathon, reverberated along the Seven Hills of 
Eome, and almost awoke, about ten o'clock this morning, old Eom- 
ulus on the banks of the Tiber. 

Owing to the mysterious destinies of Ii'eland and of our scattered 
race, there is not a spot, from the Yellow Sea to the Pillars of Her- 
cules, from Garryowen to Melbourne, in which some merry Ii-ish- 
man does not on this day fix the green shamrock in his cap, and, 
with overflowing soul and wild transports of native joy, sing the 
inspiring airs of his country, and chant aloud the magical tune of 
"St. Pati'ick's Day in the morning." But the commemorating voice 
of this day through primaeval Asia and old Europe is weak in com- 
parison to the power it attains when it has crossed the Atlantic, and 
reached the friendly, crowded shores of young and vigorous Amer- 
ica. There many a fond Irish heart welcomes the well-known 
cheers, as they burst in the patriot skies of Bunkers Hill : there 
the shout assumes the majesty of thunder as it rolls in peals, again 
and again repeated, .over the boundless prairies that skirt the Missis- 
sippi, and is echoed and re-echoed along the chiselled AUeghanies, 
until it dies away into silence about two o'clock to-night, as it re- 
echoes the placid boundless bosom of the Pacific. 

Thus round and round the globe is the voice of Ireland this day 
heard by all mankind — thus her scattered and fated children sing 
the wild song of their native land to the stranger — thus they pour 
forth the patriot strains of their beloved country to the idolatrous 
Tartar, to the polished European, and the savage Indian ; thus they 
stretch their united hands to each other on this day, and round the 
entire world they form a girdle of national love and patriotism, which 
reaches from the east to the west, and we couple the north and the 
south poles within the wide circle of our exiled but glorious affec 
tions. He proceeded — Listen for a moment, about twelve o'cloc) 
to-night, and you will hear our own harp pour forth its Irish, plain 
tive voice from New York, across the broad enraptured waters of th / 
Atlantic. Even now, if you will be quiet, you can audibly distin- 
guish the shout of joy raised by seven millions of our blood, our 
race, and our Faith, along the free shoi'es of glorious, hospitable 
America. 

Oh ! America, how I love your green fields, because they are now 
the resting-place of the wandering children of our country I I 



g TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

worship your lofty mountains and your rich valleys, because they 
afford an as^dum and a barrier against the storms of adversity, 
which have swept away and withered the ancient homesteads of Ire- 
land. I bless your majestic rivers, your magnificent lakes, because 
I behold the friendly canvas of your marine spread on their joyous 
waters, conveying my forlorn countrymen to a peaceful and plentiful 
home. Oh ! America, I could die for your generous people, be- 
cause they have opened their arms to welcome the ejected sons of 
St. Patrick! — I long to stand in the presence of the patriot, the 
accomplished Mrs. Tyler, and the incomparable ladies of America, 
that I may offer to them the deep homage of my grateful heart — 
that I may present to them the respect and the enthusiasm of the 
people of Ireland, for the withering chastisement they have inflicted 
on the sainted cruelty of the Duchess of Sutherland, and for the 
grateful dignity with which they have exposed the well-meaning 
hypocrisy of her noble committee. And I long to behold the 
country where the broken heart of Ireland is bound for, her daugh- 
ters protected, her sons adopted : where conscience is free, where 
religion is not hypocrisy, where liberty is a reality, and ^vhere the 
Gospel is a holy profession of Divine love, and not a profligate 
trade of national vengeance. 

How long, O Lord, wilt Thou hold Thy omnipotent scourge over 
Ireland, the most faithful nation of all the kingdoms that possess 
the Divine revelations from Heaven ? But till Providence is pleased 
to staunch the flowing blood of Ireland, and to heal the wound, we, 
her persecuted sons, are bound to raise the cry of horror against our 
relentless oppressors ; to keep up through each coming 3'ear and 
each century, the watchwoi'd of our sires for freedom, till the happy 
day of our deliverance. It is glorious to struggle for the redemp- 
tion of one's country ; it is base tamely to submit to the tyrant's 
frown — liberty, and then death, is preferable to slavery and life. 
Oh ! eternal liberty — inheritance of the soul ! 

" Better to bleed for an age at thy shrine, 
Than to sleep for one moment in chains." 

Beloved fellow-countrymen, of late years I have had more oppor- 
tunities of seeing the sufferings of the Irish than many others I 
meet them at the seaport towns ; I hear their complaints ; I am 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 9 

familiar with their hard ti'ials, and feel intensely their dire fate ; 
and, in the midst of all their misfortunes, they never lose the native 
affections of their warm Irish hearts. 

About the year 1849 I went on board an emigrant ship at the 
custom-house in Dublin in order to see the accommodation of the 
I)oor emigrants. While walking on the deck, I saw a decent poor 
man from the County Meath, with the ugliest dog I ever beheld in 
his arms. He seemed to be keeping up a kind of private conversa- 
tion with this dog, and occasionally he kissed him so affectionately, 
that I was led to speak to him, and made some inquiry about him. 
He told me that the dog's name was Brandy, that he and his mother 
were in bis family for several years, and that he was the same age 
as his youngest child. He continued to say, that on the day he was 
ejected, and his house thrown down, Brandy's house was thrown 
down too ; in fact, that the poor dog was exterminated as well as 
himself. That he took pity on him, brought him to Dublin, paid 
fifteen shillings for his passage to America, and that he would sup- 
port him with his children as long as he lived. While we were speak- 
ing, the dog began to bark ; on which I inquired what he was bark- 
ing at. " Oh ! sir," said he, " he knows we are talking about the 
landlord. He knows his name as well as I do, and the creature 
always cries and roars when he hears his name mentioned." 

Oh, many a trial the poor Irish have endured during the last six 
years ! Many a volume could be filled with the cruel persecution of 
the faithful Irish. From Galway to America, the track of the ship 
is marked by the whitened bones of the murdered Irish that lie 
along the bottom of the abysses of the moaning ocean. And yet 
those that have reached the friendly shore still drag a heavy chain 
which binds them to their native land ; still they long to see their 
own beloved hills, and lay their bones mth the ancient dead of their 
Faith and their kindred. And if death summons them beyond the 
Mississippi, or amidst the snows of Canada, or the pestilence of 
Mexico, they turn their fading eyes towards the day-star that rises 
over Ireland, and their last prayer is offered to Heaven for the 
liberty of their country — the last sigh to God is made for the fi-ee- 
dom of her altars. 



10 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Rev, Dr. Cahill's Address to the Catholics of 
Glasgow, 



I R. CHAIEMAN, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am laboring 
on the present occasion under a deficiency, for which I am 
convinced you will pardon me, namely, I am afraid you 
will not understand me in consequence of my Irish accent. I 
now beg to tell you, with the deepest feeling of a lasting gratitude, 
that, although I have received many marks of_ public favor hereto- 
fore in Ireland and in England, I have never found myself placed in 
a position of such exalted distinction as on the [)resent occasion. 
Surrounded as I am, not by hundreds but by thousands of gentle- 
men and ladies, by priests and people, I return my homage for your 
advocacy, on this evening, of a great principle in thus honoring the 
individual who now addresses you. 

Your eloquent and valued address, written on satin in golden 
letters, shall be preserved by me as long as I live ; it is a model of 
exquisite taste, and conveys impressions of affection which I shall 
carefully bind up with the most cherished feelings of my life ; but 
there is an eloquence of soul which the golden ink could not ex- 
press ; and that silent thrilling language must be read in the merry 
faces, the sparkling looks, and ardent bosoms which reveal to my 
inmost heart the sincerity and the intensity of your feeling towards 
me. 

In associating me in the most remote connection wth the great 
O'Connell, you do me an honor which would raise even a great man 
to imperishable fame ; as you illume me with a ray from that im- 
mortal name which sheds unfading lustre on the records of Ireland's 
saddest and brightest history, and which will live in the burning 
affections of the remotest posterity of a grateful country. I am 



EEV. DR. CAHILL. ^l 

like a jolly-boat following a line-of-battle ship, as I move in the 
foaming track of this leviathan giiardship of Ireland. Large as I 
am, I am lost in the spray of the rudder ; and no one who has ever 
witnessed the discharge of his broadside against the enemy, heard 
the thunder of his command, or saw the fatal precision of his aim, 
will ever think of comparing any living man to the great de])arted 
Irish champion. And it was not the fault of our old commander if 
his invincible barque did not convey the liberties of his country to 
a successful issue — he sailed in shallow water, he was stranded by 
necessity ; but no one has ever dared to say that either he or his gal- 
lant crew ever quailed before danger, or struck their colors to the 
enemy. And when the returning tide rises and the breeze freshens, 
the old noble ship shall again set her sails before the wind ; and, 
changing her name from Eopeal to National E(][uality, her fearless 
crew shall again shout for freedom, and, with some future O'Connell 
at the helm, she will and shall again face the storm, and ride the 
swollen flood in pride and triumph. 

Whenever I go to Dublin, I pay a sorrowing visit to the tomb of 
our old commander, where I shed a tear over his ashes and plant a 
flower on his grave. I mourn for the lip of fire which was -.vont to 
kindle into resistless flame our universal patriotism ; I grieve for the 
melting tongue that could dissolve the whole national will into a 
flood of resistless combination ; and as I gaze on the dark vault that 
spans the horizon of Ireland, and see pretty stars shining in the 
Irish skies, I weep as I think on the brilliant sun that once careered 
in these skies in peerless splendor, the luminary which guided our 
destinies for upwards of half a century, but which now, alas ! has 
set forever below the saddening west of time, leaving the crimson 
clouds, like funeral drapery, to shroud the fading twilight that hangs 
over his departed memory. 

Oh, if he had lived to stand on the heights of Ireland, as the 
churchyards during the last seven yeai's sent their united wail of woe 
across our stricken land ; oh, if he had lived to gaze on the red 
waves of the Atlantic, and heard the wild sinking shriek of Irish 
despair, wafted from the moaning abysses of the deep, as our kindred 
perished on their exiled voyage — he, and he alone, could raise a cry 
of horror which would be heai'd in the ends of the earth — could 
shake the foundation of the nations, and wrench justice from eA^en 



12 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the iron bosoms of our cruel oppressors. None but he could pro- 
nounce the funeral oration of the Irish, for he had a voice that could 
fill the world and enchain the attention of mankind ; and he alone 
had a heart to express the greatness, the perfection, the fidelity, the 
sufierings and the death-struggles of his unfortunate country. He 
was Ireland's own son, the impersonation of her own heart — and he 
alone could sit at her bedside and speak words of consolation for the 
extermination and the massacre of her defenceless children. 

Your allusion to my public letters makes me very happy. There 
can be no doubt that England has endeavored, since the year 1815, to 
bring to a successful issue the largest conspiracy ever perhaps known 
in the whole world. When she placed Louis XVIII. on the throne 
of France, after the battle of Waterloo, she found herself for the 
first time, for the last seven hundred years, virtually directing the 
politics and practically planning the counsels of France. This was 
a bright opening to her intrigues and ambition ; and from this period 
may he dated the commencement of a scheme which, for hypocrisy, 
anarchy, deceit, and infidelity, has no parallel in the history of the 
civilized world. 

Secure in organizing an English party in France, she next jii'o- 
ceeded to enslave to her views poor Spain, alrcadj' demoralized, 
plundered, weakened and exhausted by the presence of two contend- 
ing armies. England, therefore, first planned the separation of her 
South American dependencies and allies, and hence she revolution- 
ized all that territory into petty republics, and located a powerful, 
designing party iu the Republics of Guatemala, Chili, Peru, Colom- 
bia, La Plata and Montevideo. Spain herself thus became an easy 
prey to her perfidious diplomacy; and hence, in the year 1832, she 
changed the succession to the throne, divided the nation into two 
hostile factions, and raised up at the Court an English party, which 
governs there at the present moment. She even made a bargain, 
which I am able to prove from undisputed documents, to lend money 
to the Queen's party, on condition of guaranteeing to her the repay- 
ment of the funds so given from the confiscation of all the Church 
property of the nation. 

In the year 1833 she carried out the same design precisely in 
Portugal ; placed the daughter of a rebel son on the throne, advanced 
money for the execution of this palpable rebellion, on the condition 



REV. DK. CAUILL. 13 

of being repaid in the same way, — namely, the confiscation of all the 
Church property in Portugal. Here again she planted her English 
party, who rule to this day the kingdom of Portugal. And with 
such desperate fidelity did England carry out her plans, that, within 
two j'ears, she sold the churches in both countries, and converted 
them into theatres ; she took possession of all the convents in Spain, 
both male and female ; she seized all the large convents in Portugal ; 
she banished from their cloisters one hundred and fifteen thousand 
monks, friars and nuns, who perished of hunger, affliction, and a 
broken heart. The debt due to England by Spain has been already 
paid ; but I am in a position to prove that the wretched Portuguese 
have not as yet cleared off their unholy national mortgage to the 
English bankers, who, twenty yeai's ago, advanced the money on 
English government security. 

The Duke of Wellington has received many Protestant hiurels 
from his campaign in Spain, and the partial historian pronounces 
glowing panegyrics on his honor and character in the Peninsular War. 
True, he paid, in gold principally, for the food of the English army 
there ; but he inflicted a thousand times more injury on that country 
than the plundering army of the French. Under pretence of depriv- 
ing the French of any point of attack on the English, he threw down 
the Spanish factories, burned their machinery, beggared their mer- 
chants, ruined their commerce from that day to this, and has thus 
been a greater enemy to Spain than the most savage Hun that ever 
spread death and desolation over that fine country. 

I must tell 3'ou an anecdote of Wellington. About the j^ear 1816, 
there was a tavern in old Barrack Street, having over the door " the 
sign of the old goat." The tavern keeper made a fortune by the 
call of the County Meath graziers, who frequented his house. He 
gave his daughter in marriage to a young man on the opposite side 
of the street, who, seeing the good luck of his father-in-law, set up 
a public house in opposition to the old man, and he, too, placed "the 
sign of the goat" over his door to deceive the customers. The old 
man then, in retaliation, wrote, in large printed letters, under his 
sign, "the real old goat." But soon changing his mind, as the Bat- 
tle of Waterloo had taken place tbe year before, he ordered a painter 
to draw out the Duke of Wellington iu full military costume in place 
of the old goat. The painter did execute the work, but he forgot to 



14 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

efiace the words of the old sign ; and there the Duke of Wellington 
appeared with the General's truncheon in his hand, and having the 
words, " the real old goat," written under him. I tell you, now, 
that the real old goat was the most persecuting foe, the most deadly 
enemy, that Spain ever saw. 

The English conspirators being now secure in the principal thrones 
of Europe, proceeded to Austria, where they encouraged the civil 
war which has reddened the soil in human gore, and has eventuated 
in the most disastrous results to that great Catholic country. Not a 
city, town, village, in Austria or Hungary, in which an English 
agent was not found woi'king like the devil in his vocation of civil 
strife and national revolution ; and it is an admitted fact, that the 
English party had become very powerful through every part of the 
empire. But Switzerland was the great focus, where the English 
party openly avowed their sentiments, and publicly threatened the 
Catholic po\Fers of Europe with immediate civil revolution. 

The world will be surjjrised to hear that the English party and 
their confederates amounted in that country alone to the astounding 
number of seventy-three thousand sworn enemies of Catholic mon- 
archy. I here pledge myself before this assembl}' to prove the per- 
fect accuracy of this st-itement. They next spread themselves into 
Naples, where the King, unaware of this English conspiracy, 
admitted them into his confidence, and gave them official places 
in his public schools. They ultimately succeeded in forming a per- 
fect network over the whole surface of Europe ; and while they were 
laboring to lay the materials of a universal explosion beneath all the 
Catholic thrones, they were confederating all the Protestant powers 
to act with one simultaneous efibrt when the day of their matured 
plans should have aiTived. 

During all this time England appeared kind to Ireland ; spoke 
largely of the Catholic monarchy in the Queen's speeches, and talked 
of honor and international law. But under this exterior of good 
feelings she preserved feelings of the bitterest private rancor towards 
universal Catholic policy. 

This conduct reminds me of an old Tory grand juror, from the 
hanging town of Trim, in Ireland, during the judicial reign of Lord 
Norbury. It was in the year 1818, when O'Connell was working for 
Emancipation. This old gentleman had dined with Norbury, heard 



REV. BR CAHILL. ]^5 

him speak against Catholic Emancipation, — took too much cham- 
pagne, and fell in a ditch on his way home. He wore a fashionable 
red waistcoat, and a turkeycock seeing the red color, flew to him in 
the ditch, and commenced blubbering over the head of the juror. 
He fancied it was Lord Norbury who was still inveighing against 
Emancipation ; and whenever the turkeycock paused in his blubber- 
ing elocution, the old juror would exclaim, "Quite true, my lord; 
these are noble sentiments, worthy of your lordship, and highly hon- 
orable to the Crown." ' Here the turkeycock would again resume, 
and cry out " blubber, blubber, blubber," to which the old Bruns- 
wicker would reply, — "I agree with your lordship ; your remarks 
proceed from true Protestant principles worthy of a Bishop, and they 
eloquently defend our Holy Chiu-ch ; I always admired your language 
as the ornament of the bench, and we both shall die sooner than 
retract one word of your brilliant speech, or emancipate these Cath- 
olic rebels." Now, here was an old fellow so drunk that he could 
not distinguish between Lord Norbury and a turkeycock, and yet 
the devilment of bigotry was so much in him that he would not agree 
to unchain the very men, who, perhaps, sat by his side on that day, 
and for whom he had pretended to entertain feelings of friendship 
and toleration. 

Up to the year 1846, the office of a British minister seemed to be 
revolutionizing the neighboring States and making royal matches. 
They have attempted to place a Coburg in all the royal palaces of 
Europe, and to transfuse the influence of England into the blood of 
several roj^al houses. Not a revolutionist in Europe who was not the 
intimate friend and correspondent of the English Foreign Secretary. 
The very men most abhorred in their own country were received at 
all the English embassies ; and thei"e could be no mistake that Eng- 
land advocated their cause, approved their scheme's, and assisted 
their machinations. Every rebel foreigner appealed to England for 
advice, and in his difficulty flew to her for protection. 

Concomitantly with this political scheme, the English Bible Socie- 
ties, under the protection of England, sent their emissaries into all 
these countries ; and by misrepresentation of the Catholic doctrine, 
by lies of the grossest invention, and by bribery, they opened a 
campaign of proselytism in every Catholic city in Europe, and 
united their efforts against Catholicity with three resident conspira- 



26 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tors against monarchy. The lodging-houses, the hotels, and the 
watering places, were everywhere filled with a swarm of soupers, 
and biblemen, tourists, novelists, naval officers, military men, 
young lords, correspondents of the London press, were to be found 
at every town of the European continent, all pressing forward to 
carry one point, namely, the slander of the Catholic priesthood. 
Stories about convents, lies about priests, anecdotes of monks, filled 
thousands of nicely bound small volumes, and sold at all the railway 
stations in England ; and no less a sum than five million pounds 
were annually expended by these societies through Europe in this 
flagitious work of calumny, lies, profanation, and perjurj'. 

Not au embassador, an attache, a charge d'affaires, a messenger, 
was employed in our diplomatic circles who was not as unprincipled 
a writer as Sir Francis Head, as conceited a historical libeller as 
Macuulay, as great a hypocrite as Sir Stratford Canning, as ridicu- 
lous a souper as young Peel, and as mean a bigot as Sir Henry 
Bulwer. Not a man would be acci'edited to any Court who had not 
the kidney of Shaftesbury, the rancor of Palmerston, and the intol- 
erance of Russell. It was a strange sight, indeed, to behold other 
names, which I shall not meirtion, teaching sanctity by corruption, 
publishing faith by infidelity, propagating truth by lies, enforcing 
purity by profligacy, and really worshipping God by the devil. 

Fortunately for the cause of religion and of order, this doubly 
infamous conspiracy has been wholly detected and laid before the 
gaze of mankind : most propitiously, Louis Napoleon has succeeded 
in rescuing France from an abj'ss of national disaster, and most 
providentially ever^' Catholic country has escaped an awful catas- 
trophe ; and they all now, by a united reaction, have detected 
England's perfidy ; have banished her spies from their respective 
territories ; have degraded her diplomatists ; insulted her name ; 
banished her from their international councils ; and at this moment, 
she hangs her head like a convict, in the presence of foreign courts 
— the detected assassin, the perfidious enemy of the religion and 
the liberties of Catholic Europe. 

All these men are now defeated and degraded ; Russell is a dis- 
carded hanger-on, waiting at St. .Stephen's behind the chair of a 
successful rival ; Palmerston, like an ill-conducted servant, has been 
reduced from Foreign Secretary to a detective sujierintendent of 



REV. DR. CAHILL. \J 

police ; and like an old jaded actor, who once took a first part iu 
the performance, but being ultimately unable to act, still clings to 
the stage, and earns his bread in a minor office, we behold in pity 
the Foreign Minister, once the terror of Louis Phillippe — once 
sneeping the Mediterranean with an invincible fleet — now reduced 
to be a crown prosecutor against his former companions at Old 
Bailey by day, while at night he receives a precarious employment, 
snuffing the candles behind the scenes at Lord Aberdeen's benefit. 

Lord Palmerston's fate reminds me of a man in the County Lei- 
trim — a terrible bigot — who, during one of the paroxysms of a 
brain fever, fancied that one of his legs turned Catholic. In his 
indignation at seeing Popery contaminating his Protestant person, 
he jumped out of a window to kill the Catholic leg, but he unfortu- 
nately fell on the Protestant leg, and he limped on the Protestant 
leg all the days of his life after. Poor Palmerston, I think, will 
have an unbecoming halt during his life on his Protestant leg. 

In what a proud contrast does not Lord Aberdeen appear in refer- 
ence to his Whig predecessoi's. The friend of the Catholics, the 
advocate of justice, the enlightened and consistent supporter of 
toleration, he has won our willing veneration, and has earned the 
respect of Christian Europe. No bigot, no hypocrite, no persecu- 
tor, he has already gone far to heal the wounds of former adminis- 
trations ; and by perseverance iu his honorable career, he will 
succeed in due time in removing the contempt, and suspicion, and 
the hatred, in which the British Government and the Protestant 
creed have been held during the last few years by the Catholic 
sovereigns and people of Europe. Many a million of money this 
British fanaticism will yet cost England in the maintenance of an 
army to defend her shores against the numerous enemies she has 
made ; and the Protestant Church will soon learn to her cost, that 
her lies and infidelities will yet concentrate upon her the just indig- 
nation of mankind, and, at no distant period, will sweep her tenets 
and her name from the map of Christian Europe. 

When I use the word "England," I do not mean the noble, gener- 
ous people of England; no, I mean the mean, the perfidious, the 
persecuting Government of England. And all Europe now under- 
stands this distinction as well as we do ; we thank God that England 
is at length detected, convicted, and degraded all over the world. 



18 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

At this moment, whenever she speaks of civil liberty, all the world 
calls her liar, tyrant, assassin ; whenever she talks of liberty of con- 
science, all Europe scouts her as a persecutor, a hypocrite, an 
unblushing slanderer ; whenever she attemjDts to introduce the name 
of God, and to talk of sanctity, and of English Christianity, all 
Europe burst out into an immoderate fit of laugliter, and cries 
shame at her, and points to her treachery, her scandals, her murders, 
her suicides, her blasphemies, her infidelities, her crimes, her enor- 
mities ; and mankind considers Sodom and Gomorrah, and Bal^ylon, 
as so many earthly paradises in comparison of the multitudinous 
sinfulness of England. 

She is met in every market-place in Europe at this moment, and 
called liar, and demon ; her embassadoi's are jibed at this moment 
at every court in Europe, and called hypocrites, soupers, infidels ; 
and her travellers, tourists, correspondents, are watched in every 
corner of Europe, as so many burglars, assassins, and demons of 
naked infidelity. The Lord be praised, she is caught at last. Yes, 
Ireland shall soon be free from English persecution, and from the 
oppression of the Protestant establishment. 

Two curses have been inflicted on Ireland, namely, the rackrent- 
ing landlords, and the accursed tithes. These two embodiments of 
malediction have bent Ireland to the earth, and have crushed her, 
body and soul ; and like a swarm of locusts, they ate up every green 
and living thing, and left nothing behind but the flint of the land. 
After centuries of this oppression, it suddenly pleases our rulers to 
make a law of Free Trade. No one, more than I do, advocates tiie 
principle of cheap broad for the workingman, and of employment 
for his children in the mechanical arts of commerce. But the prin- 
ciple has introduced a scene of woe, which no pencil can paint. 
The poor are exterminated, the ditches are crowded with the weak 
and aged ; the poor-houses are charnel-places of pestilence and 
death; and the emigrant ship, like an ocean hearse, is sailing with 
her flag of distress hoisted, moving slowly through the waves, as 
she throws out her putrid dead ; and, like the telegraph company 
laying down their submarine wires, the crews of the emigrant ships 
have learned, by long practice, to tell off a line of the Irish dead 
along the bottom of the deep, and at the same time to sail six or seven 
knots an hour. England has practised them in this ocean sepulture. 



REV. DR. C AH ILL. 29 

SO that, before the end of the year 1849, they could smoke, tell off 
the winding sheets, and sail, all at the same time, from this dexter- 
ous, nautical, cholera practice. 

Slen there are who assert that the Government could not avoid 
this catastrophe. I answer, it is a cruel lie. If there must be a 
change in the laws of trade, well, then, let it be made ; but let the 
law-makers bear the respousibility. If they must have a new law, 
well, then, let them pay for their whims ; let them make compensa- 
tion for the damaging results of their own free, deliberate acts. 
They say the law is good in priuciiile ; I answer, but bad in detail. 
They say it has healthy premises ; I reply yes, and a deadly conclu- 
sion. They say, it is perfect in argument ; but I assert, it is mur- 
der in practice. They assert, it is the law ; but I resume, and say, 
so much the worse — it legalizes and authorizes the public massacre 
of the people. This is a legal mockery, to hear the legislators tell 
the dying, starving, rotting peasant, that he ought to be quite con- 
tent with his lot, since he dies a constitutional death, he will be 
buried according to law, in a Parliamentary chui'chyard, and will 
sleep till the day of judgment in a logical grave. 

I am no politician ; all I know is, that the English laws have 
killed the people ; and what care I for the principle of Protection, 
or the logic of Free Trade, if the triumph of either party murder the 
poor. And I reply to the free-trader and to the merchant, and to 
the Cobden's school, by saj'ing, If you will and must have your way, 
then be prepared for the consequences, meet the consequences, pay. 
for the consequences — if there is to be suffering, then let the guilty 
suffer — punish the landlords — aiflict the money-lenders — exter- 
minate the House of Commons — murder the English Cabinets — 
extirpate the Protestant church — yes, punish the guilty who pro- 
duced the catastrophe : if there will be a famine, then buy bread for 
the dying, give them the twenty millions of gold j^ou have in the 
Treasury ; add twenty millions more to the national debt if neces- 
sary — treat the Irish with the same justice as yon have treated the 
slaves of Jamaica — do pay for your own acts — do punish the guilty 

— but in the name of honor, truth, justice, humanity, and in the 
sacred name of oaths pledged and ratified at the foot of the throne, 
do not punish the innocent poor — spare the unoffending peasantry 

— shield the defenceless tenantry who trusted you ; do not massacre 



20 ■ TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the millions who confided in your former laws, and as you have done 
it — and massacred all Ireland trusting in you — I swear, before high 
Heaven, that you have mixed up a curse with your bread, which 
will eat into the marrow of your bones; and you have awakened in 
the swelling bosom of Irishmen, a flame of legitimate anger which 
will never be quenched, till you shall have made satisfaction for the 
sutterings, the extermination, the expatriation, the death, and I shall 
add, the massacre of the unoffending children of Ireland. 



KEV. DR. CAHILL. £1 



Rev, Dr, Cahill's Lecture, 

Delivered at the Academt of Music, New York, March 17th, 
1860. — "The Fidelity of Ireland in Defence of her 
Liberties and her Ancient Eeligion." 



IpiADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — I assure you, though I have 
. IJH had the pleasure of meeting you here before, I never was so 
(^Jlii) completely overpowered in my life as upon the present occa- 
.•^w. sion. I have made a bow to you as gracefully as I could, 

^ endeavoring to acknowledge the compliment you have paid 
me, but that was with the front of my head. As thei'e are a great 
many of my friends at my back, and as I am not able to make a bow 
with the back of my head, permit me to turn about and make a bow 
to the ladies and gentlemen behind me. I am endeavoring to take 
in breath to give myself voice to fill this most extensive hall. Since 
I have had the pleasure of being here with you, I have addressed 
large assemblies in the city of New York and elsewhere ; but 
whether it is the height of the hall, or whether it is my excitement, 
I think this is the largest assembly I have ever seen in the whole 
course of my life. I never shall forget the compliment paid to me 
to come here this day. It is not so much the delight of meeting 
you here as the delight I experienced in witnessing your glorious 
procession. I came from the city of Troy yesterday. (A voice — 
Where were you?) I like to see you all up to concert pitch, and I 
would be a bad performer, indeed, if we don't have abundance of 
melody this evening. I little thought of the glorious satisfaction 
that awaited mc in looking at your procession. I assure you I never 
felt more proud of Irishmen than on this day. I have been told that 
if I had been present at the Cathedral this morning I would have 



22 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

learned eloquence from the most beautiful and polished discourse of 
the gentleman who preached there to-day. I am sorry I could not 
be there. It is a loss I shall regret as long as I live. 

When I went out to look at the procession I was delighted to see 
the number of banners, the cap of liberty over the harp of Ireland ; 
and what I Avas very glad to see was the American flag side l)y side 
with every banner as it passed my hotel. The stars and stripes went, 
if I may use the phrase, hand in hand with the harp of Ireland. 
How I longed to be a great man, as I saw every one uncover his 
head as he passed the statue of Washington. I was delighted to see 
such worship, if I may so speak, offered to the memory of the dead. 
Thousands of men taking off their hats and bonding themselves in 
humble posture as they passed by the "Father of his Country." I 
was delighted to see one man drive six horses, but my astonishment 
was drowned when eight horses came afterwards, to see the crowded 
reins in the hands of the skilful driver. Then I Ijeheld the men clad 
in armor passing along, and I saw the forest of steel lifted above the 
barp of Ireland. A suggestive idea presented itself to my mind as 
I saw brave men, in regular military step, with their muskets lifted, 
their bayonets fixed, and there, going before, beside, and after, the 
glorious harp of Ireland. 

I saw the cavalry, the soldiers mounted on their beautiful horses, 
and they held their swords so much to my taste, and they moved so 
regular, and the whole procession was so orderly. There were Ire- 
land and America joined in the two emblems, the Irish harp and the 
American stripes and stars. But I was greatly astonished when I 
saw a man driving twelve horses. The horses seemed to go by the 
same kind of sense as if they were twelve human beings. When I 
saw the driver with the bundle of reins in his hand, and the horses 
ntoving with such regularity and precision, I said, I would like to 
know the name of that driver. That man must be from Tipperary, 
and his name O'Connell, for that is just the way O'Connell used to 
drive a coach and four through every act of Parliament. 

So you see I have been looking sharply ; and my weakness was 
such, if you so call it, that, as the whole scene passed before me, 
and my heart upon Ireland, tears, Irish tears, stood in my eyes. 
Perhaps these tears made the men look bigger and finer, but I 
thought they were the finest men I ever saw. I have seen the 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 23 

rreuch, Austrian, and English armies ; I have seen two hundred and 
fifty thousand men under arms ; but somehow or other, knowing that 
the greater part of those passing before me were my countrymen, I 
toolv it into my head, from magnifying them in my heart, that they 
were the largest men I ever.saw. My feelings were more than excited 
when I heard the beautiful band. Will you give me leave humbly to 
say that I am a musician, and that I have heard in this city about the 
best instrumental music I ever heard in my life. To-day the tunes 
were all Irish, — " St. Patrick's Day," "Garryowen," "Nancy Dawson," 
the " Young May Moon," the " Sprig of Shillelah ;" but the tune 
which quite astonished me — I don't know what you call it here — 
and that reminded me of my boyhood, was " Tatter Jack Welch." 
I listened to them all with the greatest pleasure ; I was delighted 
with them. A thousand thoughts passed through my mind. My 
mind on that occasion was like a postman's letter-bag ; everything 
was in it. I did uot laugh ; I had to cry. Had I been by accident 
or otherwise in the back room when the procession passed, I should 
have lost a glorious scene, which I shall tell of mauy a time vvheu I 
return to my own country. 

We are all here to celebrate the great festival of St. Patrick. I 
am sure everybody will agree in saying that this is a great day for 
Ireland, as well as for the entire Christian world. It is certainly a 
great day for Ireland — the greatest we have. But if you only reflect 
for a moment and read history, you will find that it is equally true 
to say that it is a great day for the whole Christian world. 

I siqDpose you do not forget that I have the shamrocks here 
next to my heart. When I was coming from Ireland, I intended to 
get a flower-pot made out of the clay of the County of Meath, and 
a sprig of shamrock from the same soil, and put it in my trunk, and 
bring the real shamrock to you ; but I have replaced it by an excel- 
lent American shamrock, whose leaves are broader than those of the 
Irish. 

Men meet in America upon stated occasions to celebrate the mem- 
ory of their great politicians ; if I may so speak, to worship the 
heroes of their country. From the time of the Grecian empire to 
the preseuf period this has been customary in all nations. Men 
meet together to celebrate the memory of the man who struck off a 
link from the chain of his country ; the memory of the poet, who 



24 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

elevated the genius of his nation by his divine poetical creation ; or 
the memory of the artist, whatever art he may be engaged in ; and 
all mankind rejoice, and feel pleasure and enthusiasm as they go for- 
ward, to point to the genius of one of their countrymen. But what 
signify art, and sculpture, and poetry, and patriotism, compared with. 
Christianity ? 

When we celebrate the memory of a saint, a universal joy is felt 
in his country. Poets, sculptors, and politicians, and historians, and 
painters, — they certainly generate a feeling peculiar to the various 
departments for which they excel. Men celebrate the principle, but 
do not imitate the men. We not only celebrate the principles of 
St. Patrick, but try to imitate him in practice. The Christian's anni- 
versary is superior to every other, because mankind not only wor- 
ship the principle for which a saint or martyr died, but being a saint 
and Christian, his memory is calculated to awaken an idea and 
enthusiasm, not only to respect his principles, but to follow his 
example in practice. Therefore, the anniversary of St. Patrick sur- 
passes in that regard every other anniversary which can be brought 
to jDublic notice. 

St. Patrick rose over Ireland like a star in the west, and, like the 
stars fixed in the blue vault of heaven, there he has remained from 
that hour to this, not obscured by the storms of that country, and 
not lessened in his lustre by all the eflbrts of man to distui'b the seed 
which he planted ; and there he remains unobscurcdin the clear Irish 
skies (clear in religion) ; and as fiir as human forethought can go, and 
human sagacity can calculate, it is highly probable that Patrick's star 
will never set in that west. This anniversary is therefore a glorious 
day for Ireland. What a trifling incident laid the foundation for the 
conversion and future character of Ireland ! A small boy on the 
coast of France — a lad, sixteen years of age — was captured by 
the Irish. I do not really like to call them Irish pirates, but some 
historians say they were ; but whatever they were, they captured 
Patrick at the age of sixteen and carried him to Ireland. He 
attended swine on the mountains of Antrim and elsewhere for seven 
years. His capture broke his father's and his mother's heart. All 
his kindred bewailed him. His uncle, a bishop, was inconsolable. 
He was a beautiful, fine j'oung man, guileless, and while upon th& 
seashore was captured l)y Irish pirates, torn from his home, and sub- 



REV. DR. C A HILL. 25- 

jected to a vassalage so low that he was commanded to attend swine 
in the north of Ireland. We all saj'how unprofitable, how unhappy, 
how unfortunate ! Yes, that is our logic ; but let us look at the logic 
of the skies, and we shall see how fortunate, how happy, how glori- 
ous, how consoling to Patrick himself and all his friends, and to the 
entire Christian world. The logic of God is very different from the 
logic of men. 

When the people of old, about the year 1800 of the world, — that 
is about 2200 j'ears before the birth of our Saviour, — went to build 
the Tower of Babel, and built it very high, as a place of a refuge in 
order to protect their kings and themselves in case of another universal 
deluge, there was man's logic. God saw them building it ; the men went 
to their work, and he confounded all their languages. The mason 
called for mortar, the hodman brought up stone ; called for brick, 
the hodman brought up wood ; and they were so confounded they 
had to give up the work. You say. How trifling that is. Could He 
not have shaken it down by an earthquake ? Could He not strike it 
with lightning ? Could He not send His spirits and scatter it to the 
winds? Yes, He could ; but He has a particular way of His own. 

Twenty-two hundred years after that, St. Peter preached his first 
sermon iu the streets of Jerusalem, a poor fisherman, an humble 
man, illiterate ; and everybody said, " What, this is the poor fisher- 
man speaking all our languages from the Black Sea, from Byzantium, 
from ]\IesopoIamia, and all the neighboring countries. Here is this 
poor fisherman speaking all our languages," — and three thousand 
men became converted in a day. 

Now, if God had not confounded their languages, they would all 
have spoken one language, and Peter could not have performed that 
miracle ; and, therefore, the thing that we I'egard so foolish in the 
year 1800 of the world, turned out to be the most glorious fact after 
the death of our Lord, and after the sermon of Peter. Hence, the 
thing that looked so foolish in the eyes of man was glorious in the 
eyes of God, a fact which ought not to be forgotten. So the little 
incident of St. Patrick being captured and brought into Ireland, in 
place of being unfortunate, is the most glorious fact related in the 
entire history of the Christian world. In our logic, we lay our pre- 
mises in the morning and draw our conclusions in the evening. We 
lay down our premises, for example, at twelve o'clock, and draw our 



26 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

conclusions at two or three, but God often lays down His premises 
thousands of years back, and He will draw His conclusions twenty 
centuries afterwards ; slow, but certain, like all great works ; and as 
invincible, and as imperturbable, and certain as His own exist- 
ence. 

After having remained in the country seven years, by the same 
miraculous guidance by which he was brought into Ireland, Patrick 
escaped; but having escaped, and recollecting the condition of the 
Irish, he was so moved that he determined to devote himself to the 
Church : and he spent about twenty-two years preparing himself for 
the priesthood by study ; and after twenty-two years, a long time 
preparing for the priesthood, and preparing for the bishopric, he 
presented himself to one of our greatest Popes, Pope Celestiue, who 
gave him authority to go to Ireland. Accompanied by twenty fel- 
low-laborers he landed in Ireland ^vith the Cross about the end of the 
fourth century. Some say it was about the middle, but all admit 
that it was the middle or the end of the fourth century, about 372. 

Thus, from the simple incident of being captui'ed and carried to 
Ireland, came his idea of becoming a priest and bishop, and after- 
ward the great Apostle for the conversion of our country. St. Pat- 
rick, therefore, carried out his labor like a true Apostle, and there 
is no instance related in history of such success and such extents of 
territory travei'sed. The number of bishops he ordained is miracu- 
lous ; the number of churches — religious houses — he established is 
wonderful. After converting the whole country, and after making 
it into a garden of Christianity, he died, full of years, one of the 
most remarkable men of whom any account is given on the page of 
ecclesiastical history. He died about the year 441, near the middle 
of the fifth century. Ireland, after its conversion, became the semi- 
nary of Europe. The arts and sciences were taught there. 

The churches that were built and the colleges that were constructed, 
and the entire number of schools and seminai-ies, rendered Ireland, 
bej'^ond dispute, the unrivalled seminary of Europe ; and we were so 
happy. There was never so happy a nation as Ireland at that time. 
Ireland was then engaged in trade with all the countries around the 
Mediterranean. We traded with Egypt, with old Pagan Carthage, 
and with Spain. I assure you that, while some writers represent us 
^s very ignorant from tlie fifth century up to the invasion by the 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 27 

Danes, yet the Irish were as civilized, independent of religion, as 
perhaps any northern nation of Europe ; and some go so far as to 
state that the best of our poetry, and the highest of our musical com- 
positions, are borrowed from that time. Other musicians dispute 
that, but do not deny that Ireland was very high in the arts and sci- 
ences, as well as being unrivalled in her religious profession, from 
the middle of the fifth to the end of the eighth century. But, oh ! 
the baneful effects of national divisions ! As your historian and fel- 
low-countryman, delivering a lecture for you, I can conceal nothing 
from you. I may say something that will hurt myself; but, beyond 
all dispute, it is an unfortunate national character, from that period 
to this, that Ireland has had multiplied divisions. We have had five 
kings in those days, all rivals, —kings envy kings, — kings quarrel- 
ing about their territory, and in various disputes, which tarnished 
very much, indeed, the reign of religion. These five kings made 
five divisions, which, I firmly believe, laid the foundation of our 
national disputes. We are all cousins of a king. There being five 
kings, and there being a very limited territory for each, each Irish- 
man was a cousin of the king, or the king's wife. We are a royal 
race, and will not admit that anybody in the world has better blood 
in his veins than ours. Along with the divisions created by a hostile 
countiy, I say positively that these five kings laid that deep founda- 
tion of national discontent which has been the greatest misfortune of 
our race. This chronic dissension is not in the nature of the people ; 
it is in the soil ; the people are good, are very good ; but to be bora 
in Ireland is to be an agitator. " I knew," said a certain person, 
" of a man's going to where two factions were going to fight. ' AVhat 
brings 3'ou here?' said the parish priest; 'you don't belong to the 
Gowans or the Murphys.' ' No," says he, 'I don't.' 'What brings 
you here ? ' 'I come here to fight on my own account.' " 

Another enemy of ours, to show that the quarrelsomeness of the 
Irish is due to the soil, says : " You may see in the Liverpool market 
all the cattle of England together, the Berkshire, Devonshire, and 
all the shires ; there they all are. They lay down with their legs 
like the four legs of a table ; but bring in one Irish cow, and there's 
a battle for the whole of them." 

I have a problem in history to propose. You know I have been 
a long time a professor of history. What a pity it is that, when Julius 



28 TREASURY OF ELOQUEJNCK 

Caesar came to England, seventy-five years before the birth of our 
Lord, he didn't conquer IreUmd as well as England, and teach us 
unity. If we had been conquered in those days we should have been 
united, we should have had the English principle in us, and we 
should have avoided the disaster of being chained for more than ten 
centuries. Another problem is, what is the reason that the Irish, 
who are so fiiithful to one religious principle all over the world, can- 
not be united in politics? I answer, because their religious leaders 
never betrayed them, and the others always did. It would have 
been, therefore, advantageous decidedly if that problem of history 
had been carried out, and if Rome, in the year 75 B. C, having con- 
quered Great Britain, had also conquered Ireland, and taught us 
unity. That would have kept us together, instead of our being 
chained and persecuted by a foreign, hostile nation. I have other 
problems in history that I will leave you to answer yourselves ; I 
•will not answer them. 

Christianity was known in Rome early in the first century, where 
Paul preached it. It was known in France at the end of the first and 
the beginning of the second century. It was known in Ireland ia 
the year 372 (St. Patrick) ; it was known in England 596 (Augus- 
tine) ; it was known in America 1492 (Columbus and his followers) ; 
it is not yet known in Tartary, and had it been, with the electric 
telegraph as we now have it, we would have heard of it in three 
weeks. 

God does everything by human means, guided supernaturally, of 
course. We have got the Gospel in our mouths, and we have to be 
the heralds, and not angels, for it is spread all over the world, and 
we have to carry the Cross, not upon the wings of the lightning, but 
upon our own shoulders. I will give you a fact : Christianity took 
fifteen centuries to travel here, and it is not yet known in Tartary, 
where it would have been known if there had been civilization the 
same as here, showing that civilization aids materially in the propa- 
gation of the Gospel, a point not to be forgotten. Now we have 
passed over, if I may so call it, the early history of Ireland. From 
the fifth to the eighth century we were very happy, with the ex- 
ception of those divisions which invited the Danes to invade us. I 
begin at the foundation-stone of the history of Ireland, and I will 
bring my beloved countrymen, step by step, but briefly, from the 
foundation up to the present moment. 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 



29 



Divided by our kings, we were invaded by the Danes, and were 
presecuted for over two centuries by them. Our churches and libra- 
ries were burned, and our best records destroyed. It was only in the 
eleventh century that they were finally conquered by Brian Boroinihe 
at Clontai'f. During the invasion, religion, education, civilization, 
literature, and our history all suffered, and we were thrown into a 
state of barbarism from which we afterwards emerged with great 
difiiculty. 

The Roman Empire fell iu the fifth century. Its downfall com- 
menced in the second century. The Romans left England in the 
year 441, about the time St. Patrick died; they were called home 
to defend Italy, under Valentine, their Emperor. They fell shortly 
after that — about thirty j'ears ; that is, about the year 475. Spain, 
France, Barbary, in Africa, and Asia Minor, all formerly depend- 
ants, mere provinces of Rome, now assumed their independence. 
There was one universal war from about the year 475 up to the 
eleventh century ; and all the dependent nations recovered their 
liberty from the great tyrannical power, which held sixty millions of 
slaves. "Will you say you are accurate?" lam. There were 
sixty millions of slaves in that one empire, comprising half of Asia, 
half of Africa, and almost the whole of Europe. These slaves were 
among the chief agents who afterward conquered that country. 
When Rome was overturned all the dependent countries went to 
war. What was the consequence? Ireland, being far from the 
seat of war, cultivated and taught the arts and sciences ; and foreign 
nations sent their chiklren to Ireland to be educated. France and 
Spain were at war defending their liberty, while we were undis- 
turbed. We had, therefore, a large number of foreign chiklren 
with us, cultivating the sciences. It was in the times of these dis- 
turbances among foreign nations that very many entered the monas- 
teries. That was God's logic. He saw that all these countries 
would be deluged with blood, that carnage would deface the fields 
of Europe. He saw that, perhaps, religion might fall temporarily 
under these sad catastrophes of national disturbance, and therefore 
he inspired thousands of men to go into the monastery. They were 
freed from the services of war ; and they preserved the light of 
literature and the blaze of religion that otherwise would have be- 
come extinct. We preserved it in Ireland in the same way. The 



30 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

monks preserved it in those various ages c.illed the Dark Ages — 
dark ages of the military laity, but not of the Church. Ireland was 
not subject to these difficulties, and was then the seminary of Europe. 
I can count no less than eight nations who would be obliged to ac- 
knowledge that it was upon the altar of religion in Ireland that they 
lighted their torches, and brought back faith and learning from our 
own country to their own. 

I now come to the worst page of Irish history. It is not a page, 
it is a book, a book of national woe. Irish division, Irish royal 
rivalship, and Irish want of trust in each other beti-ayed Ireland into 
the hands of England. Dermott McMurrogh, an Irish king, being 
beaten by one of his peers, went over to England and called for as- 
sistance from England ; and he got it. Then were forged the chains 
which we have been dragging from that hour to this : and then were 
formed the fetters and the manacles which we have had upon our 
feet and hands from that awful hour to the present moment — when 
Ireland sold Ireland unto a hostile neighboring country ; and Henry 
II. came over to enjoy the triumph on that occasion, with about 
four hundred sail, in the year 1172. We were given over, bound: 
hand and foot, to a powerful, hostile, united nation; and is it a. 
wonder that our country, weak and divided, fell a victim to this 
powerful and formidable confederacy ? Then were forged the chains 
which from that hour to this have held us in subjection to a country 
hostile to our liberty. "Is there no one," said Henr}' II., "to rid 
me of this man?" meaning Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury. And to Henry II. has been laid the guilt of instigat- 
ing the murder of that man. He has been accused from that hour 
to this of instigating the death of the Bishop ; and he came over to 
Ireland with his hands red with the innocent blood of a Roman 
Catholic prelate. 

What could be expected of his successor? John began to reign 
in 1199, and died 1216. He reigned seventeen years, and he was 
the greatest tyrant our religion and our country ever had. His 
soldiers with their swords cut down the corn, and left the people to 
perish. He was the first man that forced the Irish to eat the grass 
of the field. Remember what I say, and may j'ou never be sul)ject 
to it, that when one man gets power over another man, he will never 
part with his grasp but with his life. The most terrible thing in the 



REV. BR. CAHILL. 32 

world is to give one man power over another man ; for when he gets 
the power he will never part with it. John had that power, and he 
persecuted us. He restrained our bishop and persecuted our priest, 
thinking to seduce our bishops. John was a Catholic ; but there is 
nobody in the world a greater enemy to his Church than a bad 
Catholic, I will not say a nominal Catholic. But a bad man a 
Catholic is the worst man in the world. He is a coward, knave, 
that man ; he is a base impostor, that man ; he is an infidel, hj'po- 
crite, that man. I could point out a powerful king at this moment 
who has been persecuting us during these last seven years, who is 
continual in his persecution, and among all the enemies of our faith 
in Europe, that man is decidedly without exception one of the most 
dreadful, diabolical, and formidable enemies of the Catholic Church. 
To give 3'ou an idea of John's hatred of our race, I will state a 
fact of history. When his army was quartered in Kilkenny, where 
the young women were, as they are now, the most beautiful in Ire- 
land, a regulation was made that every soldier that married a Kil- 
kenny lady should get fifty lashes. Out of a regiment of 700 men, 
699 of them got the lashes. If there are any lulkenny ladies here 
to-night, they ought to show forth their gratitude Jiy giving a cheer 
for the 699. Now, omitting any intermediate points, I will pass on 
down to the times of Elizabeth, 1558. As I do not want to talk 
bitter politics in this religious lecture, I will pass on through the 
reigns of the Johns and the Henrys until I come to 1558. No Cath- 
olic man could occupy but an acre of arable land and a half acre of 
bog. How could they live upon an acre of arable land and a half 
acre of bog? They did, however. The monasteries were all thrown 
down. The churches to this day have the marks of the cannon-balls 
in them, and many a time have I got out of my gig or from my horse 
and gone into those churches and surveyed the walls, and taken oif 
my hat for every stone in the wall. I have often stood beside these 
broken and shattered walls, and musing said, "Hei'e are these old 
walls broken and tottering on their foundation and covered with ivy. 
They look like old fellows of a hundi'cd years of age, trying to stand 
to tell their grandchildren what they saw when they were young 
men. Tottering on their foundation, persisting against storm and 
tide, striving to stand as long as they can, as it were to tell the un- 
born genei'ations what they suffered for the Faith." How often have 



32 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

I pulled oS the ivy which clung to the stones found about these old 
churches. I have often taken the ivy and put it in my pocket- 
book, and said, " You mantled these towers heretofore in their orig- 
inal pride and glory ; and now, faithful ivy, you cling to them with 
fidelity when their fragments lie upon the ground in forgotten ruin." 
I have made out the altar and the priest's grave. How often have I 
stood where the altar was, and how often have I stood where the 
priest's grave was, and said, " O God, if I could wish to make a 
speech, this is the place. I would like to stand on the martyred 
ashes of this pdor fellow. I would like to stand here at night when 
the moon is setting, and when she casts her pale light above the 
horizon. I would like to be in this old church." And I have said, 
"O martyred priest, will you send some of the warmth of the spirit 
you had when alive to teach me to speak with 3'our spirit in defence 
of my country and my religion." 

I remember the history of the poor priests in those days. With 
a reward of £5 for their heads, they went from house to house, and 
no one ever betrayed them. I remember a visit some time ago to 
Donegal, with Dr. McKeuuey, who pointed out to me the Mass-rocks 
and the slated points where the poor priests used to meet their flocks 
at night ; and many a time on a Simday and a Monday the sun rose 
on their familiar devotions, and at daybreak the priest was breaking 
the bread of life to the poor children. They celebrated the Mass 
under the broad canopy of the skies, in the sight of God and the 
angels in heaven. I said to him, "These were the daj-s when the 
priest entered the hearts of liis people, and he has remained there 
from that day to this ; a spot from whence we are never dislodged 
unless we cease to do our duty." He showed me the place wliere 
one priest, McDonald, used to meet his flock. "Ah," said he at one 
time to his flock, " I cannot meet j'ou in the daylight, but I will 
come out at night. I am the shepherd, and I will whistle in the dark, 
and then the sheep will know that the shepherd is present, and it 
will repel the approach of the wolf. I will hold the whistle in my 
mouth, and at night I will whistle, and my flock will hear it ; it will 
keep them together ; it will repel the hostile step of the wolf." 
It was upon those days that we used to meet the congregation at the 
cross-roads, and from the practice of putting money in his hand to 
keep him from starvation has come that glorious habit of giving a 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 33 

shilling to the priest when he met his flock. I do not like it now, 
but I would keep it up forever, in memory of those daj's. In those 
days of persecution we never flinched, and such courage and in- 
trepidity as were exhibited by the priests and the people of Ii'eland 
during several centuries cannot be produced from any other portion 
of history. For five centuries, Catholics and Protestants, one for 
conquest and the other for bigotry, opposed our faith, and an Irish- 
man never flinched. We lost scarcely a man from our ranks. We 
stood together hand and foot, neck and shoulder, and w© have pre- 
served to this day the very faith which we now advocate. 

To give you an idea of the hatred in Ireland of a country which 
oppressed us so long — I do not like to mention names ; but a most 
eminent convert in Ireland, an Englishman, has been preaching in 
Ireland what has been called a crusade for the conversion of Eng- 
land, and asking every one to pay a certain sum and to be partici- 
pants in the crusade with him ; and he thought to get us into this 
crusade. Preaching this crusade at a certain parish, he thought he 
had them all converted. When the congregation came around him 
in the yard to see what kind of a man he was, he said, "Well, boys, 
I hope j^ou listened to me." " We did, indeed." " Won't you pray 
for England?" "Bedad, sir, if it does not displease you, we would 
rather not." "But don't you like to see the English all saved?" 
"Well, to tell you the truth, we would as soon see them as they 
are." "You would not like to see them go to heaven?" "We 
would rather see them going the way they are going." " But it is your 
duty, since they are your enemies, to heap coals of fire on their 
head." "Oh, faith, we'll do that ; we will heap them on as long as 
you like." 

In those days the Irish had to quit the country and go to the 
mountains. Seventy thousand were banished, and the rest quit the 
soil and went to the mountains, and they remained there, and when 
Elizabeth died the possessors of the soil had it all to themselves. 
And they said, "All this soil will do so very little good unless it is 
cultivated, and we might as well bring them poor fellows down from 
the mountains to cultivate the soil." And that was the first posses- 
sion in Ireland, coming down from the mountains, taking a misei*- 
able cottage or house, and cultivating the soil for the masters. And 
that became the rule for a number of years after. After the death 



34 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of Elizabeth, we took into our head that her successor would be veiy 
kind ; but it was far worse in a certain way. He even thought to 
change our names. . He was the first, you know, that thought to 
change our names, and he sought, in some cases, to make our names 
like the English names. 

And, therefore, all the McNeils in tlie north of Ireland, and the 
McGuires, the O'Donnells, and the O'Neils, and all the other great 
names in the north of Ireland, he undertook to change into Baker, 
Smith, Grayson, Mason, Birch, Salmon, Pike, Herring, Brown, 
Steele. He did not succeed to a great extent, and he banished them 
out of the country. You can scarcely believe all that we suffered in 
the time of James. We suffered a great deal from him, luit after 
him we came to the worst of :dl, Cromwell. 

[Dr. Cahill here related an anecdote of au Irishman going into the 
west of England to apply for a day's work. The Englishman 
replied, "I will not give it." "Why?" "A countryman of yours 
came here last year, was six weeks sick, which cost me a good deal, 
and his coffin and his burial cost me more." " Ah," replied the 
Irishman, "if that is the only trouble, I will settle that with you 
directly. I will get a character from nine English gentlemen to show 
you I never died anywhei'e yet."] 

I do not like to tell you what was done by his army in Drogheda 
and Wexford. The young men had their brains beaten out against 
the wall, and the babes were hurled into the air and caught upon 
their pikes when coming down. There never was such a scene as 
the daily intercourse of Ireland presented for four or five centuries. 
When I have related our sufferings to the French, they could not 
believe it. Said they, " How could you endure it? It was beyond 
endurance." We have endured it, however, from that day to this. 
There was no reign in which cruelty, tyranny and barbarity were 
more in requisition, for the purpose of changing the faith of the 
people, than that of Cromwell ; and yet not a single man abandoned 
our ranks, or flinched from his duty. After Cromwell was removed 
in 1660 (he reigned eleven years) , we came into the reign of William 
and Mary, and instead of that being to our advantage, it was a reign 
of greater persecution than au}^ before it, and put Irish fidelity to a 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 35 

greater test in those days than, jserhaps, any other reign. It was a 
persecution under a difierent aspect, to be sure, but still a cruel per- 
secution. Shiel, our great Irish orator, once, in talking of that, 
said, " What a shame that any government should permit this con- 
tinual assault upon the Catholic faith. Surely every man would go 
for the overthrow of such a government as that." Shiel worked his 
way as an Irish orator of great power, and he aided very materially 
in advancing the cause of emancipation. 

Next came the reign of the Georges. We were then promised 
education, and fair trial by jury ; but when the education came, it 
was offered to us like a cup of poison, and the boon which was 
boasted of all over Europe was such that we were unable to accept 
it. We were unable to make use of our most elementary books. 
Trial by jury was offered us, it is true, but it was made a real 
mockery. We have one instance upon record of a certain trial being 
got up in the reign of George III. A man was accused of murder, 
and put in the dock ; witnesses were called, and a verdict of " Guilty " 
having being brought in, the judge was putting on his black cap to 
pronounce the sentence, when the man that was supposed to be dead 
walked into the court. The counsel for the prisoner said, "Here is 
the dead man ; he is alive, and, of courte, the A'erdict is wrong." 
The judge took off his caj) and addressed the jury. " Gentlemen," 
said he, "this is a most remarkable case. The man that was sup- 
posed to be murdered is here, and is certainly alive. Your verdict 
is, at the same time, quite correct. The testimony of the witnesses 
gave you what is called moral evidence, and you pronounced what 
is called a moral verdict ; that is, a thing that is morally true, but 
not metaphysically true. It is possible that you could make a mis- 
take, but there is no possibility of a mistake being made here. The 
man is alive. So, while your verdict is before me as a moral verdict, 
the man being alive stands before me as a metaphysical verdict. One 
will admit of a mistake, but this cannot. You will have to go back 
and reconsider your verdict." Tiiey did so, and in about ten minutes 
they returned with a verdict of " Guilty." Said the judge, " How can 
that be?" " Why, we will tell you. He stole a gray mare from one 
of us about ten years ago." So they brought him in guilty of mur- 
der for stealing a horse. If this were told of in any other part of the 
world, persons would say that this was a fable. But the bigotry was 



36 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

SO great, the hostility was so great, that when we were about to hope 
for emancipation, they were anxious to extinguish that hope : and 
every enormity that seemed necessary for the purpose was readily 
resorted to. 

We come noAV to a late period of our history. Begin at the old 
Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Eg^qitian, and Persian, 
and Roman Empires, go through all the older Empires, and come 
down all along through history, and I appeal to you as your his- 
torian and countryman whether there is an instance on record of a 
nation suffering so much. Is it not astonishing to every scholar 
all over the world, and yet, here we are as heiu-ty as ever, as if noth- 
ing had ever happened? You look as merry to me and you laugh as 
hearty as if I were addressing you in the town of Cloumel, and you 
look better, I think. You are even heartier fellows than then, and 
you are all laughing together at the misfortunes of seven hundred 
years. Do you recollect that beautiful passage of Moore? — 

" Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of J03', 
Bright dreams of the past, wliich she cannot destroy ; 
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care, 
And bring baclc the features that joy used to wear. 
Long, long Ije my heart with such memories filled! 
Like the vase, in which roses have once been distilled; 
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 

We are not broken, and here we are as hearty as ever, as if noth- 
ing had ever happened. It is not our fidelity that is so remarkable 
as the buoyant spirit which follows us through the world. 

I come now to our own times. You did not see that, though I did ; 
perhaps a great ni:mbcr of you have seen it and heard of it, though 
none of you have seen it as I have — I allude to the famine and 
fever, when men went into their houses and sat upon their beds 
and died of hunger, and women went in, and sat in their beds with 
their little children, and died also of hunger. Men would be talking 
to you as I now do, and die in a half minute. A cousin of mine, a 
priest by the name of Brennan, who attended the Charity Hospital 
in Dul>liu, used to carry a coffin from bed to bed, and say, "Now, 
recollect that you will be in this in half an hour." They used to ask 
him to turn back and come again, Init if he turned buck they would 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 37 

be dead. Men would be walking along the road staggering ; you 
ask thera what was the matter, they would reply, " We have the 
famine fever." "Where are you going?" "To the fever hospital." 
It was a sleepy fever that seized upon the heart as if a clockmaker 
took the pendulum and made its oscillations less and less imtil it 
stopped entirely. The blood grew less and less rapid in circulation, 
and the poor fellows, as if their legs were of a ton's weight, staggered 
along from their homes to the hospital. Their lands were given up 
and they were sold in those days for the taxes, and many a man 
made a fortune at that time. I know several lands in the west of 
Ireland that were sold for the taxes. Men would give them up for 
a trifle in order to get away, giving up the holding of sixty, seventy 
and a hundred acres. The potatoes failed, and that was the heaviest 
curse that ever fell upon Ireland — I will not say the heaviest curse, 
but the heaviest trial. The church-yards are yet red with the blood 
of the dead, buried without coffins. Can a man describe hell to 
please the fancy ? How can a man walk over the graveyard of the 
uncoffined dead and speak with politeness? Whenever I took. my 
pen in hand to wi-ito upon these horrors, I found my blood run quick 
and my Irish mind rise high and bitter in enthusiasm, and I was 
obliged almost to dip my pen in blood in order to express the 
anguish which agitated my very soul. We lost two and one-half 
millions of our people. There is many a woman hSre before me, and 
many a young man here who, if he told me his own case, would 
equal my history. Notwithstanding the famine fever, the pycst of 
your Church never left you. We walked into the houses of our 
flock, we put our mouths upon your ear, and your mouth upon our 
ear, and have we ever left you as long as the breath was in you ; 
have we ever neglected to stand by your side ? It is not therefore 
wonderful that I assume a tone of command over you, and dare to 
speak to you with the command I now use, and insist upon j^our good 
conduct ; we who would have died with your father, your mother, and 
your children, who are prepared to spill our blood on every fitting 
occasion for the purpose of maintaining the liberty of our country 
and the freedom of our altars. I saw this famine and looked at it. 
Of those that left the country 10,000 alone perished at Grosse Isle. 
Two thousand perished with famine and scarlet fever, and those 
two thousand lay in Sligo field for two days without an awning over 



38 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

them, and yet there were 24,000,000 pounds of gold in the British 
Treasury. Who can paint that but an Irisliman, and who could tell 
it in such language as an Irishman, with an Irish tongue in his 
mouth ? If I were the best orator in the world and spoke the Eng- 
lish language with the English accent, why it would not do at all. 
It must be in the native Irish tongue. There were two and a half 
millions of our people gone by the fiimine, and soupism, and exter- 
mination. What was the next? Soup! striving to change our 
religion for a bowl of soup. They came over to instruct us in their 
religion, to change our faith, — and who were they who came ? 
They wei-e old discarded policemen from England, weavers from 
Manchester, cabmen from Loudon, — and these are the men that 
came over to teach us religion. One of them who was teaching us 
religion assumed the strong accent upon which they spoke, and said, 
Whenever you mention tlie name of the Lord " mahk a boo " ; mean- 
ing, of course, make a bow. A droll Irishman said, "These men 
deserve to be encouraged. I'll tell you what they are going to give 
us" (they used to give us food, and clothes, and employment, and 
money). This droll fellow said, " They I'oally do give a good deal; 
the fellows that join them will be well oil'; thej- will have employ- 
ment, food, ten shillings a week in this world, and coals for all eter- 
nity." Another fellow who came over to teach us religion, always, 
when he said " upon his conscience," laid his hand upon his stomach. 
These were the men who came over to tempt us from our faith, but 
they l(jft work after thousands and tens of thousands of pounds were 
expended. These were called soupists, and we heard several instan- 
ces where they passed by the door of the cabin of a poor man, and 
said, " Now we can give you food and work if you will join us " ; and 
the poor fellow said, "Ah, no, no, I will never clothe my children in 
perjury ; I will never fatten my wife by hypocrisy ; I will never 
clothe my children with the wages of perjury, and no man might give 
me to drink though presented in a cup of gold. It shall never touch 
my lips, when the price of it is the betrayal of the Cross of Christ." 
They spent thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands, and not 
a man was ever converted. They said they came to give us the 
Bible, and they said that they gave out a million of Bibles. I said, 
according to that, every man, woman and child among the Catholics 
ought to have three Bibles, the child on the breast ought to have 



KEV. DR. CAIIILL. 39 

three Bibles, and I gave a challenge to produce me an}' one man who 
ever received one from any one of them. We had our own Bible ; 
we did not want their Bible. I also gave a challenge to produce any- 
other man who ever saw them read a Bible g(jt from them, or to pro- 
duce another man who ever saw any other man that over read of any 
other man that read a Bible got from them. Yet, according to their 
statement, the child at the breast would have three Bibles. After 
the soupists came the exterminationists. Depth below depth, preci- 
pice below precipice, a bottomless hell below a hell, — is it not a 
wonder that we are alive ? 

No man could believe, going through Clare, the extermination that 
took place in those days. There were miles of the road, and no one 
in it. During the famine fever I saw little children perfectly well, 
except wanting food, with not a smile on their face. The little chil- 
dren starving, and ie^er in their house, their father or mother dead, 
and the little things sat by the walls, and crept about without a smile 
in their fiices. Lamentation covered the country like a cloud. Did 
you ever hear the case of the widow Burns ? Her first boy died, and 
the neighbors came and dug the grave very deep. He died of fam- 
ine fever. Then the second boy died, and she carried him on her 
hack, and with a common shovel she lifted the fresh clay and depos- 
ited the second sou over the first. The third son died, and she car- 
ried the third upon her back and deposited him in the grave over the 
second; and the fourth and fifth died, and the coffin came near to 
the surface, and finally the jjoor widow died. Two women came to 
bury her, — grateful woman ! She will go after her husband through 
seas and seas, through fire and water. And when the men quailed, 
and were afraid to enter the door of the dead, two women came, and 
they laid the handle of the shovel along her dead body, and sur- 
rounded her with wisps of grass, and they carried the poor woman, 
one taking hold of one end of the shovel, and the other taking the 
other end, and laid her on the coflins of her five sons. There is 
famine fever for you, and there is extermination. There were two 
and a half millions of our people lost. Many a man driven out at 
that time has come to this country. If I could coin my heart into 
gi'atitude, I would do so, and give it to the American people to 
express my gratitude for their giving to my countrymen a home. I 



40 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

never meet with an American gentleman but that I wish to express 
my heai'tfelt gratitude to him for the hospitality, for the home which 
his country gave to my poor expatriated countrymen. 

Now, when I go to the cattle shows "in Ireland and hear them 
extolled, I am compelled to say, Why don't you tell the whole truth? 
We have two ways of talking. A man that suppresses the truth is 
one kind of a liar, and a man that suggests falsehood is another kind 
of liar. ^Miy don't j'ou express the whole truth? You say that 
your country is prosperous. Yes, it is the prosperity of the bee- 
hive, when part of the bees are killed off to make room for the rest. 
The country is prosperous by the murder of two million and a half 
of Irish inhabitants. W^hy do j'ou praise that bullock? Don't you 
know that he is the representative of a murdered family ? I cannot 
bear to look at him, because I know that he occupies the place of a 
poor Irishman, and his wife, and his children. These abominable 
cattle shows ! I cannot endure them. Besides, they are not the 
property of the people, but of the aristocracy ; they don't represent 
the property of the farmers. Thej^ have been fattened upon the land 
of the poor. The cattle shows are said to represent the prosperity of 
the people. They represent the prosperity of the aristocracy. You 
may as well say that the aristocrac}', with their richly-dressed wives 
and servants in livery, represent the people. They have nothing to 
do with the people of Ireland. The people of Ireland have been 
banished to make wa}' for these cattle. Two and a half millit)ns of 
our people have been murdered. Don't call this the policy of amel- 
ioration ; it is the policy of exterminating one-half of the beehive 
that the remainder may the better live. 

Now, you have nearly the whole case of Ireland from the begin- 
ning. It is getting late, and I must close. I am sorry that when 
this meeting was called, they did not tell you to bring your night- 
caps. 

Not a man abandoned his faith ; no man flinched under eight hun- 
dred years of persecution fov the purpose of overturning our faith. 
Therefore it is just to say that no other nation has borne perse- 
cution so long, and that no other nation has ever stood the 
trial with such invinciljle faithfulness. I therefore ask you, as my 
Irish fellow-countrymen, to look at the logic of God. Who knows- 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 41 

but your expatriation and lodge in this country has been the logic of 
God ? AYho knows but there is a great logic in this case ? Every man 
who comes to this country comes as a minister of God. He main- 
tains his faith ; and when he comes here under favorable circum- 
stances, he gives his money to the building of a little chapel. An 
Irishman has some faults, to be sure ; but whenever called upon to 
subscribe for his religion, his hand. and his heart are always readj^ to 
answer the call. The Irishman with his penny built all the churches 
of Liverpool. The Irishman with his penny built all the churches of 
London. I do not know whether I am correct, but I venture the 
assertion that the Irishmen of New York have built most of your 
churches here. The Irishman, faithful to his instinct and to his 
national faith, never flinches in any part of the world. Eeligion 
lives in him as it were fire in the flint. As you have only to strike 
the flint with the steel and the spark will fly from it, — so, though 
you may not see his religion, it will be manifested at once as soon as- 
you subject him to temptation. Everywhere I have gone I have 
called upon bishops and priests, and when I have asked them, 
" What is the main stay of j^our religion ? " they have always replied, 
" The Irish girls." Who knows but there is a great logic in our 
expatriation ? If you and I were always at home in prosperity and 
happiness, and we had money in the treasury, and we had armies 
and conquest before us, do you think we would have more saints from 
Ireland than now in our national adversity ? If the secrets of Heaven 
were known, if we could consult His books. He would say to us, 
Remain as you are ; the lessons of adversity which He preacheth are 
lessons of salvation. Look at our Lord as he sits by the side of His 
Father. What was His position ? He walked with His bai'e feet, 
"with the crown of thorns upon His head. Has He not put His own 
coat of suffering and humiliation upon your backs ? Does it not 
show you to be more His child when dressed in His own livery? Do 
not complain of your position. The logic of God is to gather more 
from adversity than from national prosperity. And recollect, the 
crown of Christ is not known by being set in precious stones. The 
majesty of Christ is not recognized by a crown set with precious 
stones, but by the crown of thorns. Who knows, if we were to 
know the logic of God, that it would not be in our fevor ; and while 



42 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

temporal difficulties may pursue us, and while we are outcasts in 
certain quarters, who knows but that in God's mind our present 
position is one of the highest He can give us ? Wherever we go, let 
us recollect two points : the first, to preserve our nationality, the 
union of the race ; and the second, never to flinch from the faithful 
profession of our national religion. 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 43 



The Immaculate Conception, 

A Seemon Delivered by Rev. Dr. Cahill, in St. James' Cathe- 
dral, Brooklyn, on Sunday, March 25, 1860, foe the Benefit 
OF THE Sisters or Mercy. 



1^,EAEEST BRETHREN, — Mankind since tlie beginning of the 
§^^ world never saw such a day as the anniversary we are now 
f^ met to celebrate. This is the 25th of March, the date of the 
1. Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, the festival being put off 

till to-morrow, but we meet to celebrate it on this day for a purpose 
of my own, and I again repeat that up to that period and perhaps 
since, mankind never did or never will behold such a day as the an- 
niversary we now celebrate. God the Father, in a week painted the 
skies — a great work. He took out His imperial compasses, and He 
swej^t the wide arch of the Universe and within the circle He put all 
things that the eye can behold. He painted the gorgeous and glo- 
rious colors that we see above us. But the day that the Second 
Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, deigned to unite Himself 
with our nature — to descend as it were from His throne to unite 
Himself with man, to elevate man to Heaven, above the angels — 
the day that He did this is without exception the greatest and the 
most glorious that mankind ever met to celebrate. 

You are aware that when Adam fell the gates of Heaven were 
bolted against him and his posterity. But yesterday a heap of clay, 
to-day an organized being with an immortal soul, who could have 
ever supposed he could rebel against God, his Father — his Creator? 
Who could have supposed that he would have been so mad as to 
forfeit for an apple his glorious privileges? The day Heaven was 
bolted against him his race was excluded, the earth on which he stood 



44 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

was cursed, God withdrew his immediate pati'onage from him, and. 
the darkness of night settled down lil\e a cloud over the whole earth. 
But see how great is the justice of God, how impenetrable His ways, 
how unsearchable His judgments, what may be called His just ven- 
geance after thousands of j^ears, during which the earth was covered 
with pitch darkness and man excluded, only to be saved by a belief 
in a future day of hope. It is on this day that Heaven begins to l)e 
reconciled to man, and the Second Person of the Trinity begins to 
be united with our nature. Think till fancy is exhausted, and who 
could have supposed that a rebel could be so lifted. The Son of God, 
long before the foundation of the world was laid, long before the 
Heaven of the angels was formed, long before a single creature was 
created, long before Adam was made, addressed His Father and said : 
Father, it is written in the head of the book that You could not be 
pleased with the blood of goats and oxen. It is written in the head 
of the book, in tlfe very first of Our transactions, that these sacri- 
fices could not please You, and behold I come to ofi'er myself. ]\Ian 
will fall — I know it, because I see into futurity. I know that Adam 
will fall and I know that he can never redeem himself. How could 
darkness produce light? How could crime produce virtue? How 
can the rebel who is finite, pay off a deljt which is infinite? How 
can fiaity pay infinity? Therefore, Father, do You recollect it was 
entered into the book of Our transactions — it was not even at the 
end of the first page, but it was in the beginning of the first page — 
what St. Paul calls the masterpiece of the power and wisdom of 
God. Man cannot pay You, therefore I stand before You in My 
bare head, and I say, pour upon My head the vials of Your wrath. 
Under the imputability of sin here I come as the only mode of com- 
pensation, and i^our upon Me the vials of Your reddest wrath. 

Four thousand years elapsed before that eternal promise was 
fulfilled, but as sure as God lives that promise was to be fulfilled, 
and therefore this is the day — the 25th of March — when the Angel 
Gabriel announced to Mary that this great compact was to be realized, 
and that God was to be united with man. And He stood before the 
throne of God as a criminal to pay the infinite debt which Adam in- 
curred by his transgression. This is decidedly the most important 
fact that ever the Church of God could celebrate. I have, therefore, 
taken advantage of this festival to discuss fur 3"ou one of the most 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 45 

beautiful dograa.s of our taith, the Immaculate Conception of the 
ever Blessed Virgin. But before I enter upon my subject I must 
again return to a second view of the fact I have published to you, 
namely, the fall of man. 

If man had never fallen, all the writers that speak upon the subject 
say, what a glorious place this earth would be. If man had never 
fallen he would have been innocent, guileless, without sin, without 
crime, faultless, no death, of course, for "death is the punishment 
of sin" — such is the beautiful language of the Church. If he had 
not fallen or sinned he would have had no fault, and how could 
a being without fault be punished? An honest man would not 
punish him, and certainly God would not. What a beautiful thought 
of these sacred writers. Man, therefore, would finish his course 
upon the earth, and when the time would expire that God allotted, 
he would rise like a spark to Heaven. 

At present there are about eleven hundred millions on the earth, 
and about six hundred and forty thousand die every day, so that 
every day more than half a million appear before the tribunal of 
God. What an awful idea that is ! If, therefore, man had not 
sinned, the same number would appear before the presence of God, 
and be received into Heaven. Would it not have been easier for 
God, you ask, to have all men appear from the depths of the sea 
and the bowels of the earth at the last day, than to have them come 
before Him when they die ? It was God's intention before man had 
sinned, that when he had finished his earthly career he should rise 
like a spark to the skies ; but he has now oi'dered it otherwise, iind 
therefore at the last day all the dead shall arise at the sound of the 
trumpet, and all mankind shall be gathered together to receive their 
final judgment. Now, what a beautiful territory this earth would be 
if there was no sin ; it is as perfect as omnipotence could make it, 
given the material of which it is composed — the Omnipotent Power 
could not make it better than it is. The only things by which it is 
deformed are sin and death. All the irregularities which we see 
arise from these, and were it not for sin and death we could look at 
the blue vault over our heads, and admire its gorgeous beauty with- 
out being oppressed with the thought that the earth beneath was 
■cursed b)' the transgression of man. 

But how can any one be happy with death, the punishment of sin, 



46 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and all its attendant evils. What a terrific punishment it is to lose 
one's senses, to have our eyes glazed in death, to be hated and 
abhorred by our nearest friends, to be put into a cofl5n, nailed up, 
put into the earth, and devoured by worms. Who ever heard any- 
thing like the sound of the clay falling upon the lid of the colBn. 
And the woman that loves her daughter most hates her when she is 
dead. She would not stay in the room in the dark with her ; she 
would not sleep with her for all the world. Now, it is the same 
way in Heaven. The fondest mother saved will abhor the daughter 
damned. I come back to this world for my proof, and I say, " Why 
is it, fond mother, you cannot embrace your dead, foul, putrid 
daughter? " Because she is in a position in opposition to me — that 
is, in death ; and when you are at the throne of God, you love every- 
thing He loves ; His mind is your mind. His will is your will ; He 
pierces you as the sunlight pierces the glass, you are filled with His 
essence, His mind is identified with your mind, you like what He 
likes, hate what He hates, but above all, you are an immortal, eter- 
nal life, while your daughter is an immortal, eternal death, and your 
abhorrence rises in proportion as eternity I'ises above this world. 
What a terrific thing is sin, then, to be the cause of this death. 
And we ha/e death everywhere — death in the air, death in the 
water, death in the fire, death in our food, death in every pore of 
the body, death from the hand of the assassin. How can any one be 
happy in an eternity where all is death, the result of sin. 

And if any one of you would now propose me the question — 
" When Christ died, as you just said to us, did he atone for all the 
transgressions of man?" He did. When His Father poured the 
vial of His red wrath on His head did Ho make sufficient atonement? 
He did ; for one drop of His l>lood was enough. He not only atoned 
but multiplied atonement by infinity. You reply — " Is therefore 
the debt of the damned not paid?" Yes, and more than paid. 
" Why is not death removed, if the whole debt is more than paid ? " 
I will tell you. Although God His Father has forgiven crime as to 
its eternal punishment, he still leaves a temporal punishment be- 
hind, to remind the sinner not to commit it again. On the present 
point the grave is my proof. There is the atonement infinitely 
beyond what is necessary ; that is my first proof, and the grave is 
my second. Forgiven? We are more than forgiven, but when you 



KEY. DR. CAHILL. 47 

see the fresh grave dug there is the temporal penalty ; and when you 
see that the saint died, and the little baby coffined and carried to 
the churchyard after being baptized — put in a little coffin, with its 
little breastplate — the baby inside but a day old — and when I 
meet a man of this world I say, " Stand, if you please ; let us accom- 
pany this little fancral till I speak one sentence in your ear : Had 
that child committed any crime of its own, personally?" "No." 
"Why is it killed?" "Because it is the descendant of Adam, the 
original rebel." "Oh! punishment for his crime ? " "Decidedly.'' 
His eternal guilt forgiven, no doubt; and it has no personal sin to 
sully the pureness of the soul — but a day old, and yet the imperial 
lash is lifted over its head : it spai'es no one, the king, the beggar, 
the saint, the sinner, the little baptized baby — all are to die under 
the lash as the result of original sin. "And pray, sir," I am asked, 
"if you now commit a mortal sin of your own, have you to do pen- 
ance for it ? " 

If the baby that committed no sin, but merely belongs to the race 
of the rebel, and his crime is forgiven — the punishment of the grave 
still remaining — and you commit a new sin of your own, will you 
answer me, ai-e you not to perform penance for it? I appeal to the 
grave, and I say you are bound to do penance all the days of your 
life till the grave closes. I say, there is my proof, and if you com- 
mit a new sin of your own is it not a clear case you are bound to 
begin your penance even though the eternal guilt is forgiven? If 
any man told you, God is good, you are forgiven- — I say yes, but 
the grave is there, and it is an imperturbable fact ; everything shows 
that. What a glorious day, therefore, this is —the beginning of a 
new era, the descent of the Son of God to earth, and the lifting out 
of hell, and the bringing of man up to heaven. I therefore take 
advantage of this day to bring before you the Immaculate Concep- 
tion, immediately connected with the two points to which I call your 
attention. And you ask me what is the Immaculate Conception? 
It is that the Blessed Virgin was not only free from personal and 
original sin in this world, but that she was free from the stain when 
she was in her mother's womb, at the moment of her conception. 
She was not only pure after she was born, but by the decree of God, 
she was free from the stain of original sin at the first moment she 
had life ^ she was immaculate — stainless. But you say. How is it 



48 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

possible that aiij^ theologian can state that fact ? I will proceed to 
the proof. Without personal sin, and without original sin ! What 
an idea that ! Free at the moment of her conception — no sin. She 
did not begin to be without sin at sixteen, or tifteen, or fourteen, or 
ton 3'ears of age. I repeat it again and again, there was no moment 
of her existence when she had sin, even original. You demand my 
proofs and I proceed to give them to you, and I hope to make the 
case satisfactory. 

When Adam fell, as I just now pointed out to you, and ate the 
apple, God, or as it is said in the Scriptures, an angel representing 
Him said, "Adam, where art thou?" — why don't you appear? — and 
Adam entered into a dialogue with the representative of God Him- 
self. He said, " I heard Thy voice in Paradise and I was afraid, 
because I was naked, and I hid myself." And God said to him, 
"Who hath told thee that thou wast naked, but that thou hast eaten 
of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldst not eat." And 
Adam said, " The woman whom thou gavest me to be my companion 
gave me of the tree, and I did eat." And God said, "Because you 
have done this thing I have cursed the earth, and it will bring forth 
thorns and thistles." And to the woman He said, "You sliall bring 
forth your children in sorrow, and I shall place you under the do- 
minion of your husband," and I know what a hard thing that is 
sometimes. To the serpent He said, "Because thou has done this 
thin"- thou art cursed among cattle, and I will put enmities between 
thee and the woman, and her seed and thy seed. She shall crush 
thy head, and thou shalt lay in wait for her heel." We are astound- 
ed when we hear these words from God the Father in Paradise ! 
What docs this language of God the Father mean — to the serpent, 
3'ou shall be cursed among animals ? It means that a day will come 
when woman, or the seed of woman, shall crush the serpent's head. 
Who is the woman who shall do this ? The Mother of our Lord. 
She it was who brought forth the Saviour, and thus crushed the 
head of the serpent. 

Oh, you say, that is a great expression, coming from the mouth of 
God Himself. I am always carried away by the words of God Him- 
self. God the Father, therefore, beyond all dispute, has foretold in 
the Garden of Paradise, the very day that Adam fell, without a mo- 
ment of interval, what He would do to save the fallen man. Said 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 49 

He, you are cursed, but I hold out to j'ou a hope on the spot of your 
salvation. The day will come when you shall trample on the ser- 
pent, when the seed of the woman .shalf crush his head. And all 
that believed in the future Saviour and kept the commandments were 
saved . We believe in the Saviour having come — jjast tense — while 
(hey believed in a Saviour who was to come — future tense. The 
same principle, only that in the one instance it refers to the past and 
in the other to the future, but the tenses and moods of grammar can- 
not have any influence on the eternal principles of God. "Who is the 
woman foretold four thousand years before she was born to be the 
Mother of the Saviour? What kind of woman ought she to be? 
A sinner? I should think not. I could not think that God the Father 
would name a sinner to be the Mother of His Son. It does not look 
like what He would do. I should expect she would be the most per- 
fect creature that ever lived. I am now only in the beginning of my 
discussion, and you will please to follow me accurately. I need not 
say how delighted I am to see you come in such great numbers. 
You please me beyond everything. You pay a compliment to me 
and to the good Sisters of Mercy, who ai-e working and struggling 
for you all. 

Who, I ask, is the woman ? Is she a sinner ? I should judge not. 
That would be a terrible case — that would be disgrace to God and 
a scandal to man — it would be a premium on vice, putting the high- 
est crown upon the individual in the possession of the devil — mak- 
ing the Saviour drink the hot milk out of a heart possessed by the 
devil. Oh, no, I don't l^elieve that. I would expect, therefore, that 
she ought to be the most wonderful creature that ever came from the 
creative hand of God. All the angels, perfect as they are, veil their 
faces with their wings in His presence. They are creatures made by 
God the Father ; they are not His relatives, but His Mother is His 
nearest relative, and I can scarcely fancy, if the pure spirits cover 
their faces with their wings, so pure is He, that He would select 
for His Mother one who was stained with sin — it would overturn all 
my ideas of the purity of the Creator. No, I don't believe that. 
I cannot comprehend how the Infant Saviour could put His little 
arms around the fleck of a being in mortal sin. I cannot conceive 
how His little veins would be filled with her blood, and that the 
blood of a being steeped in mortal guilt. I think there is no one 



50 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

before me that will not say, I am decidedly of your opinion so far. 
I think she ought to be the most perfect being that ever existed. 

Now we come to the ORl Law. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, Levi, Moses — seven men — whose lives bring us down to. the 
year 2436, and yet in all this time there is not a word about Mary. 
We hear no more of her except what occasionally flashes upon us 
when the written law was given to Moses, and when she is spoken 
of as some beautifid flower, a glorious Virgin, above the angels and 
archangels, the Pride of the Nation, the Eoyal Virgin, descended 
from a race of kings. Certainly it must be something very extraor- 
dinary, for through their writings we have occasional flashes of this 
mysterious creature. Well, from Moses to David we come to the 
year 2900 of the world, and Mary, we are told, was a descendant of 
David, a royal virgin, of royal extraction. Before we come down 
any further we see that she certainly answers the description given 
of her, and God said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
Word shall never pass away." Every word He said aljout this 
woman crushing the serpent's head is true, and it will take place in 
the long length of His reasoning. We live but for a day — He is 
for eternity. There is a woman that answers this description, is so' 
very like her, and in the meantime while you are discussing this case 
the whole thing is unravelled. 

About the age of fifteen or sixteen j'ears the angel Gabriel met her 
— no, not the angel, but the archangel Gabriel — the highest minis- 
ter of the imperial court of Heaven — no, he did not meet her, he 
was sent to her. He was sent from whom? From God the Father. 
How beautiful ! Four thousand years after the fall of Adam. 
"Hail, Mary!" he said — the highest word we have got in the He- 
brew to express salutation. It is a word signifying the greatest ven- 
eration in the salutation of anybody. " Hail, Mary ! " Who told 
him that her name was Mary? "Full of grace ! " Just what we 
expected : when anything is full of another it cannot contain any- 
thing else. And what is grace? St. Paul tells us it is the emana- 
tion of the Spirit of God ; and we are also told that it is the charity 
of God poured out on human souls, an emanation of Himself. Of all 
the addresses that have been conceived, was there* ever anything so 
beautiful, and which so meets our case? "Hail, Mary, full of grace" 
— full of the emanation of God ! Before I advance further with my 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 51 

argument, I must say I avouIcT conclude from that very word that 
Mary had personally no sin ; because if she had any sin, the words 
of the angel could not be applied to her — she could not be the 
Mother of God. And the poor people (I call them poor, not to ex- 
press their poverty, but to show their afiection), they don't want 
anything more than that — "Hail, Mary, full of grace!" — God 
speaking these words, and out of His lips everything must be judged 
according to its atomic value. 

But is this all ? No. "The Lord is with thee." God is not only 
your companion — He is with you. "Blessed art thou among 
women ! " Avhich means you are more blessed than any other woman. 
What women does he mean ? The women of that generation ? No ! 
you are not to put that construction on it. He does not say blessed 
in the past generation of women, nor in the present generation, nor 
in the future generation ; He speaks of all women from the begin- 
ning to the end of time. The Hebrew phrase signifies, you are 
more blessed than all the women who have ever lived or ever will 
live. We have a word in our own language which is somewhat like 
it — we say "he is brave among the brave," or "he is learned among 
the learned," meaning that even the brave acknowledge his superior 
bravery, even the learned acknowledge the superiority of his learn- 
ing. " Blessed art thou among women ! " INIary, you are full of the 
emanation of God, and no woman that ever lived could equal you in 
blessedness — "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." 

The same blessedness, the same freedom from sin is asciibed to 
Mary as to the fruit of her womb. She was not and could not be as 
perfect as He ; but in freedom from sin she was like Him. Don't 
you see now the Holy Ghost in that phrase ? What man could paint 
It in proper colors — Avho could paint even the very language ? I see 
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. " Blessed art thou among 
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." The same word ap- 
plied to Christ and to Mary. Had Christ any original or personal sin ? 
Certainly not. Would you not take it that Mary was equal to Him in 
point of blessedness ? " Hail, Mary, full of grace ! The Lord is 
■with thee ! Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit 
of thy womb." Now, we have here the words of the Father in Par- 
adise clearly expounded. She is the most perfect creature that ever 
lived among women ; for although the Saviour had not as yet died 



52 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and atoned for sin, she has no sin. Blessed ! No woman that ever 
has been, or ever will be, is equal to you in blessedness. She is as 
free from sin as Christ. 

Does not St. Paul tell us that we were all born children of 
wrath? He did, and so we are, except the cases that God did not 
include, and there are such cases. So, then, we are not all born 
children of wrath? We are, except the cases that are not included. 
And cannot God make exceptions ? Cannot the King who made the 
law make exceptions to the law? The monarch who makes imperial 
laws can certainly make exceptional cases in their application. And 
has he done so? He has in the case of John the Baptist — John, 
who was sanctified in his mother's womb three months before he was 
born — he was an exception to the law made by God Himself. And 
we only ask for Mary three months beyond John the Baptist. I 
proceed to read from St. Luke for you from chapter the first, begin- 
ning with the twenty-sixth verse : 

Aud in tlie sixth month, the Ang'el Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Gali- 
lee, called Nazareth. 

To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Josepli, of tlic house of David; 
and the virgin's name was Mary. 

And the Angel being come in, said to her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with 
thee : Blessed art thou among women. 

Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what 
manner of salutation this should be. 

And the Angel said to her : Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. 

Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and slialt bring forth a son; and thou 
Shalt call his name Jesus. 

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God 
shall give unto Him the throne of David His father : and He shall reign in the house 
of Jacob forever. 

And of His kingdom there shall be no end. 

And Mary said to the Angel : How shall this be done, because I know not man? 

And the Angel, answering, said to her : The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the 
Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. 

And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; 
and this is the sixth month witli her that is called barren : 

Because no word shall be impossible to God. 

And Mary said : Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to 
thy word. And the Angel departed from her. 

And Mary rising up in those days, went Into the hill country in haste into a city 
of Judea. 

And she entered into the house of Zachary, and saluted Elizabeth. 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 53 

And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant 
leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. 

We are told the infant lecaped in lier womli. Perhaps 3^011 will 
say this is all excitement ; but you will soon find it was not. " And 
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost." Now she could not be 
filled if there was original sin in her, and the consequence is that Eliza- 
beth and her child were free from original sin by that fact, and that 
John was sanctified three months before he was born. There could 
have been no sin, of course, if she was filled with the Holy Ghost. 
So that what St. Paul said was true, but these are the exceptional 
cases. 

"And she cried out with a loud voice, and said : Blessed art thou 
among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." Who told 
Elizabeth that? The Holy Ghost. 

" And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should 
come to me ? " The English of this is : how have I deserved the 
honor that the mother of my Lord should come to me ? Who told 
her this ? The Holy Ghost. Is there no honor to be paid to Mary 
after that, when the Holy Ghost utters such words ? Would you 
not think that every scholar in the world would pay honor to this 
woman's memory ? I would pay honor to the man who struck the 
chains off his country ; I would pay honor to the man of charitable 
heart, whose benevolence relieves the distresses of the poor and the 
afflicted ; I would pay honor to the man whose look spreads sunshine 
on the path of the unfortunate ; I dotft wonder at bigotry and preju- 
dice refusing honor to the mother of God, but I wonder at the scholar 
who refuses to do it. In England I know that the opposition to 
Catholicity is so bitter, that whatever we honor they despise, 
whatever we love they hate. Because we use holy water, they 
ridicule it ; because we venerate the Cross, they would trample 
on it ; because we have seven Sacraments, they will have none at all ; 
and I should not wonder if, because we pray on our knees, they 
would pray on horseback. 

But let us i-eturn to the subject of which we were speaking — 
"And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come 
to me? For behold," said Elizabeth, "as soon as the voice of thy 
salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. 
And blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall 



54 TKEASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord." And Mary 
said : " My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced 
in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of His 
handmaid ; for behold, henceforth all generations sliall call me 
blessed." Here we have prophecy. What is she called? She is a 
virgin, and her name is Mary ; she is blessed, and she says all 
nations shall call her blessed ; and her words are fultilled, for is she 
not called " Ever Blessed Virgin ? " I always write it in this way, and 
so would any scholar. "Because' He that is mighty hath done great 
things to me ; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from gen- 
eration unto generation to them that fear Him. He hath exalted 
tlie humble." She was humble and she was exalted. That is a 
great passage. I am great, I am exalted, even the mighty God has 
done great things to me. 

About four years ago all the Bishops of the world were ^Titten to 
by the Pope, to know what was their opinion in regard to the 
Immaculate Conception. The words Immaculate Conception are not 
in the text, but don't you think, from all the reasoning, that it is con- 
tained in it? I think there is no man, or set of men, who would say 
that any other case would fit this set of woi'ds, excej)t that of the 
Immaculate Conception. We deduce the word sanctification from 
the fact of his leaping with jo\^ — a deduction patent from that fact. 
Now, if we could get a deduction of that kind in Mary's case, 
should we not come to the conclusion that she must have been 
immaculate ? 

In the Apostles' Creed we say, " I believe in God the Father 
Almight3^ Maker of Heaveu and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His 
only Sou, our Lord, who was conceived bj^ the Holy Ghost, and was 
born of the Virgin Mary ! " Born of the Virgin Mary ! Why, she 
must be immaculate. Out of this principle in the Creed I take the 
deduction — Immaculate Conception. These are very remarkable 
■jvords — " born of the Virgin Mary " — one of the articles of the 
Creed at the time of the Apostles. Why, I must conclude that she 
was immaculate in her conception. Accordingly all the Bishops 
wrote to thi3 Pope, and the opinion of the whole of them is that the 
Blessed Virgin was immaculate. We always believed that she was, 
but it was never settled as a dogma before, although it was the uni- 
versal belief of all Catholics. We all believed it, and we called upon 



REV. DR. CAIIILL 55 

the Pope, the Father, to pronounce upon that article, and he has 
done so. The only difference between now and the time before it 
•was' pronounced, is that all must now accept it as an article of faith, 
and that the man who refuses to believe it must suffer the penalty. 

Dearest bi-ethren, I have now argued the whole case for you. 
There is the doctrine that is now promulgated by the Pope. The 
Immaculate Conception is a deduction implicitly contained in the 
explicit first article of fidth, " born of the Virgin Mary" — conceived 
of the Holy Ghost. The first article we believe in explicitly, and it 
is contained in the other article we believed in implicitly. Mary, 
the most glorious name in the Christian Church, foretold by God 
the Father four thousand years before she was born. She stands 
before all coming time as the IMother of God, regarded by Him as 
His mother, and as in the case of the miracle at the marriage feast at 
Cana, obeying her wish, and making even an apology to her for the 
little word He said to her — "My hour is not yet come." Nay, 
more, when hanging on the Cross, suspended between heaven and 
earth, and when in His agony Ho saw His Mother kneeling at the 
foot of the Cross — she who had followed Him when all else, except 
His beloved disciple, abandoned Him — when He looked down and 
saw His Mother weeping, He said to John, " Behold thy Mother " — 
John, you whom I have loved more than all the other Apostles. He 
gives her over His Apostles the same position which she held over 
Him. What, over an Apostle, a Bishop, a pillar of the Church? 
Yes, and He was to be submissive to her as a mother. She was to 
exercise her maternal control over Him and over the Church. 

Don't you think she has great power, then, and don't it stand to 
reason that she ought to be the greatest of created beings ? There- 
fore it is that we say Marjs Queen of Virgins, Queen of Pati-iarchs 
and Apostles, Queen of all the Saints. How beautiful is that Litany. 
What woman, therefore", would not place her daughter under her 
protection and put her medal round her neck ? When I see a woman 
Avho will not place her daughter, or a father who will not place his 
son under her protection, I fear for that girl and I fear for that boy. 
Teach your children to repeat the Litany oi" the Blessed Virgin. 
What more beautiful prayer than that ? The Litany of Jesus in the 
morning that He may protect us through the dangers of the day, and 
the Litany of the Blessed Virgin at evening that she may watch over 



56 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

US through the night. The little children in Ireland attending those 
schools by means of which they hoped to rob us of our faith say the 
Angelus in her honor every day when the clock strikes twelve, and, 
though they say it to themselves, the teachers know when they are 
saying it, for the children bow their heads when they repeat the 
sentence, "The Word was made flesh." The children were then 
forbid to bow their heads, and what do you think they did? Why, 
bowed them three times in place of once. That was the result of 
interfering with their religious practices. 

I have often praised the Northern Irish when speaking on that 
subject for their adherence to their religion, for their unyielding 
firmness on that pojnt, and I have attributed the fact of their being 
such good Catholics to their being obliged to contend for their faith 
and to make sacrifices for it. And they certainly are the best 
Catholics in the island. 

I have to thank you for coming here to-night in such numbers. It 
is, as I have said already, the first time I have had the pleasure of 
seeing you, and I thank you, not only for the compliment paid to 
myself, but especially for the interest you take in the Sisters, and 
of which your presence here to-night is a px'oof. You ought to ap- 
preciate their labors, their devotion to your children, their care of 
your sick. Do you not mark them going through your streets upon 
their errands of mercy ? Do you not see them in your schools teach- 
ing your children, and impressing on their youthful minds and 
hearts purity and piety? Is not the mother's knee the first semi- 
nary, and do we not receive from the mother's lip and the mother's 
heart our earliest and most lasting impressions ? If, then, the in- 
fluence of woman in that sphere is so deep and so widespread, what 
do not we owe to those who fit them for it, who train them up in the 
ways of virtue and ground them in the truths of then- religion? 
And this we owe to the Sisters, and I am delighted to see by your 
numbers to-night that you are conscious of this obligation and proud 
to acknowledge it, and I now conclude by invoking the blessing of 
God upon 3'ou all. lu the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost. Ameu. 



EEV. DR. CAHILL. ^J 



The Last Judgment. 

A Sermon Delivered by Vert Rev. D. W. Cahill, D.D., ik: 

St. Peter's Church, Barclay Street, New York, on Sundat 
Evening, November 29, 1863. 



|^,EAEEST BRETHREN, — God's word contains no subject 
g^|i that is presented in such majestic grandeur, such withering 
^ terror, and yet such infinite joy, as the Gospel of this day 
-L which I have just read for you. One does not know what 

fact on this awful day is most wonderful ; whether we consider the 
end of time, the destruction of the world, the multitudinous congre- 
gation of all men, the fate of the damned, and the glories of the 
blessed — j'ct incomprehensible as are all these considerations, they 
all fade, when compai'cd with the majesty of God on that day, sitting 
in imperial triumph on the clouds, surrounded by the whole Court 
of Angels and Saints. It is the great day reserved in Heaven for 
celebrating the triumph of virtue over vice, the dominion of the 
Saviour over the power of Satan — the most awful hour Eternity ever 
saw. It is the mightiest moment in the life of God ; it is the end of 
Christ's mission on earth ; the consummation of all the mysteries 
God ever published ; the final sentence of the wicked, Avhen God 
and those they love are separated forever. In a word, the Gospel 
of this day presents in one large view everthing glorious in Heaven, 
terrible in Hell, awful in Eternity, and great in God. It is a picture 
worthy of God, representing at once Earth, Hell, Heaven, with their 
unnumbered populations. No serious man can behold it without 
thrilling astonishment ; no Christian, however perfect, can look on. 
it without terror ; no sinner can believe it without amendment. As 
time once began, so time now ends. Only one condition of things 



58 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

now remains, namely, Eternity. Time is past on this day; a mere 
second of existence in the life of God. 

How wonderful is human language : though creatures of a moment, 
we can discuss things eternal ; though mere worms, we can paint 
things omnipotent : like the broken fragment of a mirror, reflecting 
the whole firmament, in our slender phrase we can describe the in- 
finitude of God. In all past scenes up to the present moment, 
cvei-ything on earth was finite, limited. It was man who was the- 
actor, and time was the condition of things. God is the actor on 
this day, and Eternity is the condition. It is all infinity. This day 
is the day of Christ. He summons all the dead : He commands all 
Hell : He is accompanied by all Heaven. No tongue can, of course, 
tell this scene. The soul's silent contemplation can best behold any 
part of it. What brush, or what artist, could paint the sun in its 
meridian glory? One glance at his burnished flood of gold will ex- 
hibit him best. And who can describe the Redeemer on His own 
d.iy of power and glory? St. Luke but faintly tells it when he 
says : " The powers of Heaven shall be moved, and then they shall 
see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, in gi'eat power and majesty." 
When the day of general judgment will come, no mortal can tell : 
the highest Archangel round God's throne cannot know it ; it is among 
the eternal secrets of His own mind. It is a future free act of His 
independent will ; and no creature can unlock the depths of God's 
libertj^ We i-esemble Him in our spiritual essence to a small ex- 
tent : we know the past and the present, in our own limited circle of 
time. The angelic essence knows the past and the present in a 
wider circle of knowledge : but no creature, however exalted, can 
know the future, unless God reveals it. Futurity can have no i-eal 
existence, since it has not as yet commenced to exist. It is solely 
confined to the mind of God, the internal mind of God : and is there- 
fore essentially beyond the reach of the higliest creature. We only 
know that the terrible day of judgment will certainly arrive in some 
future revolving century. The same Almighty word that called all 
things into being has spoken it : the same unerring testimony that 
built Nature has described its, future wreck. The feelings, the mad- 
dening agonies, the very words of the burning inhabitants are 
minutely detailed by the language of Christ Himself. The world, 
therefore, destroyed by future fire under the anger of God, is as 



KEV. DR, CAHILL. 59 

certain as any other jiast revealed fact published several centuries 
before the actual occurrence. The earth, therefore, burning in 
consuming conflagration under the angry breath of God's wrath, 
preparatory to the general judgment and man's final doom, is a 
future fact which is now a mere matter of time. It is already 
written on the coming role of the history of Heaven. When it 
will occur, creatures on earth cannot plead the excuse of being 
taken by surprise. We had been warned of the drowning of the 
earth by the angry flood ; and we saw it executed by overwhelming 
cataracts from Heaven. We were informed, too, of the comiilg of 
the Messiah thousands of years in advance : and we saw Him. We 
heard the stroke of the hammer on Calvary ; we heard Hira cry and 
we saw Him weep. In the present case we cannot be taken by sui-- 
prise : we are already warned : the great day is approaching, like 
those other events. But at what time no creature can tell. It is 
folly to reason what He will do, judging from what He has done. 

There was a time when there was no earth, no sun, no moon, no 
stars ; when all the eye now beholds had no existence ; when there 
was nothing, — all darkness, chaos, — when the Divinity reigned 
alone ; when no created voice was heard through God's territories to 
break the silence of illimitable space. Six thousand years have only 
elapsed since He built the present world and peopled the skies with 
the myriad spheres that hang in the arched roof above us. The 
mere shell, the mere frameicork of this world may, perhaps, he 
somewhat older, but we know when Adam was created with the cer- 
tainty of a parish register. It may be about six thousand years ago : 
and since that period the histor}' of man is one unbroken page of 
wickedness and infidelity. Heaven once, in anger, nearly extirpated 
our race ; and once, in mercy, forgave us. Yet, since, the earth is 
stained with guilt red as scarlet ; and the patience of a God — 
patience infinite — can alone bear it. Who can tell the amount of 
the crime of even one city for one day ? But who can conceive the 
infinite guilt of all peoples, of all nations, and all ages, ascending 
and accumulating before God's throne since the beginning? God is 
great in power, gi'eat in goodness, great in mercj^ great in wisdom ; 
but he is more than great in patience, to bear the congregated 
oflTences of countless millions, daily, hourly, provoking His anger 
and opposing His will. 



(30 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

But, as the hour of man's creation and man's redemption was 
arranged by God, and in due time occurred, so the moment for man's 
total extinction on earth is approaching, and Avhen the time written 
in the records of Heaven shall have arrived, that unerring decree will 
be executed. By one word He made this world ; by one word He 
can destroy it. By one stroke of His omnipotent pencil He drew 
the present picture of creation ; by one dash of tlie same brush Ho 
can blot it out again and expunge all the work of the skies. Who 
can limit His power? In one second He can reduce all things to 
their original chaos, and live again as He did before creation began. 
He can, when He pleases, destroy all things — the soul excepted. 
The soul He cannot annihilate. He made the world Himself — of 
course. He can Himself destroy it. But Christ is the Kedeemer of 
the soul, and, therefore, its immortal existence is as indestructible 
as the eternity of God. Eedemption is a contract between the 
Father and the Son. That contract cannot be broken without ignor- 
ing the Cross. Hence, while God is at liberty to blot out His own 
creation. He cannot annihilate the work purchased with the blood of 
Christ. Hence, in the coming wreck, the soul cannot be destroyed. 
And this is the idea that renders that awful hour a source of joy 
unlimited to the blessed, and of terrors unspeakable to the wicked. 
Yet although no one can tell when this fatal day will arrive, still it 
may be fairly presumed to be at hand, when Christ's passion will be 
disregarded on earth ; when vice will so predominate over virtue 
that the worship of God may be said to cease ; when the destruction 
of the earth will be a mercy, a duty of justice which God owes to 
His own character and to the eternal laws of His kingdom. When 
this time shall have arrived, we may fairly expect the day of the 
general judgment. 

From the lips of Christ Himself we have heard the entire account 
of this terrible day. There can be no mistake : He makes a full 
statement of the entire event. He assures us that in the latter days 
the wickedness of society will burst all restraint, and, in open defi- 
ance of Heaven, will blaspheme God. St. Mark, in the thirteenth 
chapter, introduces Christ as saying : " When you shall hear of wars 
and rumors of wars, fear ye not. For such things must needs be, 
but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and 
kingdom against kinifdom ; and there shall be earthquakes in divers 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 61 

-places, and families. These things are the beghiuings of sorrows. 
But look to yourselves. They shall deliver you up to fancies ; and 
in the synagogues you shall be beaten. And the ))rother shall 
betray his brother unto death, and the father his son ; and children 
shall rise up against their parents, and shall work their death. And 
you shall be hated by all men for My name's sake ; but he that shall 
endure to the end, he shall be saved. And when you shall see the 
abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be, he that 
readeth let him understand ; then let them that are in Judea flee to 
the mountains. In those days shall be such tribulations as were not 
since the beginning of the creation which God created until now ; 
neither shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened the days, no 
flesh should be saved ; but for the sake of the elect which he hath 
chosen. He hath shortened the days. For there will rise up false 
Christs and false prophets, and they shall show signs and wonders 
to seduce (if it were possible) even the elect. Take you heed, 
therefore ; behold, I have foretold j^ou all things." 

These are the words of Christ Himself, and they present a picture 
of society of which there is no parallel in all the history of all the 
past. ■ In this graphic description of Christ nothing is omitted in the 
condition of the earth to render it a kingdom of perdition, the resi- 
dence of Satan himself. It is damnation in theory ; it is hell with- 
out fire ; it only wants the lakes of burning brimstone to make men 
feel all the terrible realities of the damned. Who can describe this 
rending scene like Christ himself? While He was addressing Mark 
and Luke, He was at that very moment looking at the future terrors 
He was then depicting. He was painting beforehand the future 
realities which He had Himself planned. It is He Himself that will, 
on the terrible day, boil the oceans with His angry breath ; it is He 
Himself who will split the poles in His glance of fury ; it is He 
who will hurl the stars from the skies and pour His wrath over the 
devoted world. In fact our Lord was describing to Mark His own 
Almighty anger, and warning mankind against the future catastrophe. 
He was rehearsing for the Apostles and coming living ages the real 
scenes of the future dead, and the eternal agonies of the future 
damned. Who could paint l^lie Him ? He was reading from His 
own book. He was presenting for our observation the total disrup- 
tion of society, the entire overthrow of religion. The son killing the 



62 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

father, the father murdering the child ; wars, fliniiucs, signs in the 
heavens — false Chriats, false prophets, the Gosi)ol imitated by false- 
hood ; miracles repeated in magic fraud and in diabolical agency ; 
blood in the land, perdition in the air ; hell above, beneath, all 
round. God's law is so much overpowered by the predominance of 
the devil, that the Trinity have no altei-native but to shorten time, 
suspend creation, and put an end to the world. 

Is not Satan very powerful ? and when the grace of God has been 
extinguished in the soul, are not men plainly children of the devil? 
It is creation without sun or light ; a cui-sed territory — terrain 
misericB et tenebrarum, ubi umbra mortis et nullis ordo sed semj)iter- 
nus horror inhabitat. The description of Christ, in St. Mark, is 
clear. The crimes of men unnatural, shocking. The intellect per- 
verted : the heart debased : all nature polluted. Scenes of terror 
will be enacted which the world never saw before. Man will stare 
in insane desperation at the wrath of God, which appears every hour 
to be poured in renewed vengeance on all the children of men. If 
mankind would study the present moral condition of depraved 
society, and calculate the bleeding wounds inflicted on religion by 
the progress of infidelity, the picture, as presented, is not far 
removed from the iniquities here delineated by the Saviour, of the 
crime and perdition of the latter days. The cup of human guilt is 
not yet full in our time, but the world is rapidly advancing to the 
goal which our Lord has so. plainly prophesied and so graphically 
described. Christ has, beyond all doubt, described the burning,, 
bottomless gulf; and He has pointed out the palpable road that 
unmistakably leads to it. In the eternal age of God, a long, long 
time may elapse before the great day will arrive ; but, as certain as 
Christ has lived and spoken, the abyss, and the sentence, and the 
pools of burning brimstone, are only a matter of time, and this little 
span of space is only a single point in the infinitude of eternity. 

"After this tribulation," says Christ, "the sun shall be darkened 
and the moon shall not give her light ; the stars of heaven shall be 
falling down, and the powers that are in heaven shall be moved." 
And St. Luke, repeating the words of Christ, says: "There shall 
be signs in the sun, in the moon, ajid in the stars : and upon the 
earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the waving 
of the sea and the waves ; men withering away from fear and expec- 



KEV. DR. CAHILL. gg 

tation of what shall come on the whole world, calling on the ground 
to swallow them, or the mountains to fall on them, and on the rocks 
to hide them from the face of the Lord." St. Luke and St. Mark 
employ nearly the same words in copying the language of Chi-ist at 
this fatal moment. Who can describe Infinite anger in a fury? 
Who can paint Omnipotent power pulling down firmaments, and 
suns, and stars, and moons : His will reversing His former creation ; 
the earth trembling in desolation ? How minutely graphic is Christ 
in this terrible description ; and have you noticed His last words, 
where He says : " Have I not foretold all to you ? " This single 
phrase is worth the entire history ; since it stamps the terrors of 
this day with the certitude of any other truth of faith, any other fact 
of the Gospel. 

St. Mark continues to detail the order of this terrible hour. 
Terror will follow on terror; curse upon curse, "till men will fall 
away with fear." The sun being not quite extinguished, fatal gloom 
will be spread over all things like a veil over, the face of the dead : 
terrific signs are seen in the heavens, and all things announce that 
time is at an end. St. John says, that before God pronounces the 
final word there is silence in heaven ; and voices are heard in the 
air, on the water, and on the earth. At length the skies open and 
He pours out the first vial of His anger. And the end is come. 
God speaks the command ; and all nature trembles as if in agony. 
The seas swell, and boil, and rise, and lash the skies. The moun- 
tains nod and sink, and the poles collapse. The lightnings flash, 
and the moaning tempests sweep over the furious deep, piling up 
ocean upon ocean on the trembling globe. The earth i-eels in con- 
vulsion, and the whole frame of creation struggles. 

A mighty conflagration bursts from the melting earth, rages like 
a hurricane roundabout, devouring all things in its storm and flood 
of fire, consuming the crumbling wreck of the condemned world. 
The heavens become terrible, as the kindling earth and seas show 
their overwhelming flashes on the crimson skies. The sun muflled, 
the moon black, the stars fallen, floating masses like clouds of blood 
sweep the skies in circling fury. The Omnipotence which, in the 
beginning of time, formed all creation, is now concentrated in a 
point; and, as it were, intensifies the infinity of His wrath, till His 
anser can swell no higher ; and His voice is heard like thunder in 



(34 TRKASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the distance. With what eloquent terror does the Saviour paint 
this scene in His own words : Men fainting away with fear, running 
in wild distraction, calling on the ground to open and swallow them, 
and the rocks to fall on them and hide them from the face of the 
Lord." The earth on fire : the skies fiided : the sun and the stars 
darkened or extinguished : mankind burning, dying : the angry 
voice of God coming to judge the world : and Jesus Christ describ- 
ing the scene, — are realities which the history of God has never 
seen before ; and which never again will be repeated during the 
endless round of eternity. 

Reason asks : Oh, who is God? and what is Nature? and whence 
is man ? and where is Heaven ? and why is Hell ? and what is our 
destiny? Was the world made in pleasure, moved for a moment in 
trial and suflering, and then blotted out in anger ? In one revolu- 
tion of the earth on fire it is a blank. Like a burning ship at sea, 
sinking to the bottom on fire, the earth vanishes into non-existence 
under the blue vault, where it once careered in its brilliant circle. 
Not a vestige remains of its omnii^otent path. Its wide territory is 
a tenantless, dark waste — the myriad lamps of the skies extin- 
guished : all former existences crumbled : silent forever : all chaos : 
things are as if they had never been : the history of Earth and Time 
a mere record of the forgotten past : a mere hollow vault in the 
infinitude of space. Oh ! how true in this place ai-e the words, 
" Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, except to love God and to 
serve Him alone." Great and Almighty God, what a decree is 
this ! have all things come to this ? has all the past been a dream ? 
what is futurity? is it like the past? where can the mind rest on this 
tempest of the soul ? Foolish questions ; God has arranged this 
condition of things. His sanctity, justice, power, wisdom, and 
truth have arranged and executed this eternal decree. This is 
enough. We can no more change this order of things than put space 
in a nutshell, or destroy the being of God. God is His own master, 
and in His own free will He has arranged this multitudinous terror. 
But remember that in this desolation it is vice that trembles : virtue 
is secure, as God is just. In this terrible moment virtue smiles in 
happy repose on this second coming of Christ. Virtue is immortal : 
like a sunbeam on the battle-field, invulnerable in a shower of death, 
brilliant in the midst of carnage, and unsullied in the gore of the 



REV. DR. CAHILL. (55 

dead, the soul, by its immortal virtue, will shiue in undying lustre 
in that terrific hour, amidst the shock" of Nature, the powers of 
Hell, and the crash of myriad worlds. 

Scarcely has the earth been consumed, and the living population 
destroyed, when Michael the Archangel sounds his loud trumpet, 
calling all the dead to judgment. He summons all Hell to attend ; 
and commands all Heaven to appear and witness this last act of God 
at the close of creation. At his shrill summons the bottomless pit 
opens, and all those who had been lost since the beginning of the 
world come forth from their fiery prisons. The unhappy of all 
nations and ages come forth in one mighty mass, driven forward in 
rending agony to the place of judgment, their wild lamentations 
swelling as they advance, like the moaning of a tempest on their 
wide and burning lakes. As creation has been destroyed or faded, 
this terrific assemblage are in darkness, while they move on in 
despair, in dreadful expectation of the coming of the Lord. As the 
Saviour approaches, golden light appears ; the voice of a mighty 
host is heard from heaven like the opening of the morning heretofore 
in the East, every moment becomes more and more brilliant, till the 
full day of Eternity opens out in all its gorgeous splendor, revealing 
Christ, surrounded by His entire court, angels and saints, and seated 
in majesty, as He has Himself foretold, in the clouds. Angels and 
Archangels, and Cherul^im and Seraphim, and Powers and Princi- 
palities apjDear on outspread wiugs, the first of the countless host. 
Then all the Saints of the old law, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, all 
who for forty generations lived and died in the belief of the 
Kedeemer to come. Then all the Saints of the new era who partici- 
pated in Christ's atonement, the twelve Apostles, all the Martyrs, 
all the Confessors, all the Virgins, all the Religious of every clime 
and color, who in every age bore testimony or died in attestation of 
their faith. Then all the poor of every country, who, in their trials 
and sufferings, their silent atflictions and broken hearts, never forgot 
their duty to God : all, all appear crowned with glory, and clothed 
in the sunlight robes of Heaven. Lastly, in the vast train of happy 
creatures, comes Mary, the Mother of God, with twelve stars upon 
her head, the moon beneath her feet. The Blessed Virgin sits at 
the feet of her son, Jesus ; while He, with the Cross in His hand, 
lifted high above all heaven, appears in the triumph of His second 



66 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

coining, seated in the clouds. In the two pictures now before us 
read the entire history of God and Satan : the two opposite views of 
sin and redemption. Now is the time to reason on our own condi- 
tion, and to reflect well on the truths of religion, the eternal value 
of faith, and the imperishable justice of God. This is the day in 
which Christ shall receive compensation before God and man for the 
injuries He has received, where oppressed virtue shall be rewarded, 
and where triumphant vice shall be branded with perdition. 

If God be bound to do justice to the meanest being in His king- 
dom ; if justice and truth and sanctity demand the public exposure 
and punishment of those who have wounded these attributes or prop- 
erties of God, it is a clear case, justice requires that Jesus must re- 
ceive from His Father compensation for the trials of His life and the 
agonies of His death. A sinful world has ofl'endcd Him by mortal 
guilt ; their damnation proves they died without repentance ; they 
have thus refused to make atonement, and hence this is the day to 
pay the debt to eternal justice. Impenitent crime, therefore, must 
sufler eternal torment. 

Oh, when Judas betraj-ed Christ, when the soldiers mocked Him, 
spat in His face, and blindfolded Him, is it not surprising how the 
angels could have borne these iniquities ? And when Pilate asked 
the Jewish mob which did they prefer, Barrabas or Christ, they all 
exclaimed " Barrabas : " and then they said, " Let His blood be upon 
us, and on our children." Who can conceive how the archangels 
did not beg of God to annihilate the whole race of men ? But the 
mystery of the Cross had a different object, and hence this day is 
the time for human punishment. See the millions of saved souls 
that now stand in triumph round the Cross, all of whom He has saved 
by His humiliations, debasement and death. These are the triumphs 
by which He has conquered Satan, disarmed Almighty vengeance, 
and peopled heaven with the countless host of Saints that accompany 
Him in His second coming to-day. A glance by anticipation at this 
terrible hour will teach more Gospel truth, and more deceit of this 
world, than could be taught by any other lesson of instruction. 
When in this world we see the starving and naked poor crawling 
through the deserted lane, living, or rather dying, in the putrid 
hovels of disease, while the abandoned profligate lives in riotous 
prosperity, the corrupter of youth jibing death and mocking judg- 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 67 

ment — one will ask, is there a God to look on quietly at this galling 
starvation on one hand, and this scarlet iniquity on the other : he 
will ask, is there no God to relieve the pitiful cries of the one, and 
punish the scalding extravagance of the other. 

Again, when one sees the pious, devoted child of God spend a 
long weary life in prayer and sickness, in trial, in disappointment, 
and yet in devotion to God, without a day, a moment of neglect or 
dissipation, while the blasphemer or the infidel stands at God's own 
gates insulting Him on His own throne, and teaching perdition to 
all within his reach — one will ask, has God no feeling for religion, 
no zeal for the human soul, to perpetrate this outrage on Himself, 
this scandal on the Gospel, this bleeding corruption on the morals 
and faith of the public ? How can God free Himself in these circum- 
stances from being the abettor of infidelity and the encourager of 
blasphemj' ? There must be a day for Christ to receive compensation, 
for God the Father to defend Himself, for virtue to be rewarded, and 
for vice to be punished in the presence of congregated mankind. 
If this great day did not come, the Gospel might be said to be a 
dumb mockery of justice ; the. punishment of hell without a judge or 
a sentence ; the rewards of heaven without examination or a verdict. 
The whole character of God, therefore, demands that His strict 
justice to Christ and to virtue shall be made known ; while the same 
eternal character of the same justice requires that the deceit, the 
ingratitude, the blasphemy and the infidelity of the wicked shall be 
weighed in the impartial scales of God's truth, and, after renewing 
their former condemnation, plunged in the presence of Heaven and 
Hell into eternal fire. 

The bodies and souls of mortals being now united in the resurrec- 
tion, all Heaven having taken their places, all Hell gives a last fave- 
well look at the heavenly host that are spread all over all tlie skies, 
like million armies encamped. The description of St. John is so 
minute that we almost fancy we are viewing this great last scene ; 
and, as Christ has already prophesied, we at this distance of space 
and time feel our hearts trembling at the approaching sentence of 
perdition about to be pronounced against so many billions of ill- 
fated, unhappy creatures. At a given moment "a door was opened 
in heaven, and voices were heard, and trumpets were sounded : and 
there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne One sitting ; 



68 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and there was a number round about the throne, and round about 
the throne were twenty-four seats, and upon the seats twenty-four 
ancients clothed in white garments, and on their heads were crowns 
of gold ; and ft-om the throne proceeded lightnings and thunders. 
And angels were crying with a loud voice : and there was before the 
throne a multitude of all tribes and nations, which no one could 
number, clothed in white robes, with palms in their hands. And 
books were sealed, and angels held phials to pour out on the earth — 
and God seemed to make some grand preparation. And an angel 
having received a key, from the bottomless pit smoke ascended that 
darkened all the air. And He that sat on the throne, from His face 
fled away the heaven and the earth. And," said St John, " I saw 
the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne — 
and the books were opened, and the dead were judged by the things 
that were in the books — according to their works — and the sea 
gave up the dead that were in it, and hell and death gave their dead ; 
and they were judged every one according to their works." 

St. John here adds his description to the clear detail of Christ ; 
and, between the two, one thinks he is reading the facts after judg- 
ment, rather than the facts before judgment. Christ takes His place 
on the throne, looks to the right and to the left : opens the book, 
and prepares to confirm the rewards of the blessed, and to repeat 
before all the world the sentence of never-ending perdition of the 
reprobate. We cannot tell how long the examination of a world's 
guilt will continue. Time is now past ; Eternity has now com- 
menced. We have no means of measuring time — and we are not 
told how long this day will continue. He took six daj^s to create the 
world : we cannot say how long it will take Him to judge the world. 
Christ and St. John are silent on these two points. We only know 
that He judges each soul according to the law written in the books. 
If Christ Himself did not make the minute detail, and if St. John 
did not add the further particulars of the countless host, we could 
not fancy that Heaven had ever arranged this universal meeting, 
trial, and sentence of all hell and heaven : concluding with the 
eternal fire of the wicked, and with the never-ending happiness of 
the blessed. The whole case has been painted bona fide for our 
consideration : and hence we must copy the whole description into 
the inmost memory of our hearts. The scene of this day surpasses 



KEV. DR. CAHILL. 69 

all God's former character of Omnipotence. First think of the 
assembly of a parish and rise step by step to the meeting of a county, 
a province, a nation — then advance to all the nations of the earth : 
then add to this aggregate the assemblage of all ages, past, present, 
and future ; that is, the aggregate of three worlds — Earth, Hell, 
Heaven during all time. 

But how do we know what is the number of the angels : the popu- 
lation of God's own kingdom since the beginning of Eternity ? The 
population of these myriad spirits in His own boundless kingdom 
may be so great that hell and earth may be a mere unit in the incal- 
culable aggregate of all the creatures and children of the great God. 
This day therefore is so great in the aggregate of numbers, in the 
meeting of bodies and spirits, ia the presence of men and angels, in 
the appearance of Christ and all God's creatures, in the burning 
lakes of the abyss and the enrapturing enchantments of heaven, that 
all other measurable things fade in comparison of the Day of the 
General Judgment. In describing the terrors of the Day of Judg- 
ment, where our Lord is introduced as speaking and acting, it is bad 
taste to personify Christ in the sermon, firstly, because no creature 
can personify Him in the smallest particular ; and, secondly, it is 
impossible to represent His anger — but, for the sake of perspicuity, 
sometimes the preacher personally assumes in this case the words 
and manner of our Lord. As our Lord expresses the agonies, the 
feelings, the very words of the reprobate souls, and as the examina- 
tion of their crimes must occupy some time, heaven and hell must 
mutually look at each other ; and the eye of Christ must rest on 
many a familiar face and unhappy creature in the ranks of the 
damned. 

The Scriptures introduce a dialogue between Christ and the repro- 
bate ; and the Old Testament actually represents Christ addressing 
the damned while they cry and bewail their lot, and, by turns, peti- 
tion aTid blaspheme till the gates of hell are closed on their piercing 
agonies. Before the passing of the sentence, Christ exclaims : 

Christ — Reprobate souls, the gates of hell are about to close on 
you for the last time : your cries and your repentance cannot now 
alter your condition. 

The Reproved Souls — Can no circumstance change the approach- 
ing sentence of eternal damnation ? 



70 TREASUKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

Christ — What circumstance could mitigate a deliberate mortal 
offence against the infinite love and mercy of the Saviour ? 

The Damned Souls — The temptation of the riches which you be- 
stowed corrupted our hearts : and the gift, in place of leading to 
salvation, brought us to ruin and perdition. 

Christ — See the millions who stand around this thi-one, who 
lived laden with gold : see the kings, with their crowns sparkling 
with jewels : see them clothed now with eternal glory. They were 
saved by the wealth which you allege is the cause of your perdition. 
They lived by works of charity, feeding and clothing the poor, and 
advancing the support and maintenance of religion. Riches would 
have equally saved you if you employed them with the grace of 
God. But you purchased damnation at a large price — you insulted 
the Trinity at an enormous cost — you served the devil with all the 
extravagance that the most perverse education, the most expensive 
iniquity and fabulous guilt of gold could procure. The unhappy 
souls whom you have led to perdition are calling on Me for your 
blood : and your stormy bed of eternal fire is already prepared for 
your never-ending agony. 

The Eeprobate — And you gave us passions which inflamed our 
nature, overcame our reason, deranged our will, and forced us from 
religion and from God. 

Christ — See all the anchorites that surround Me here. They had 
the same flesh and blood as you. They are saved. You never 
asked for the grace of resistance. The burning of a city is but a feeble 
illustration of the unrestrained, resistless flames of the passions of 
your untamed heart. Fearing you had not sufficient inflammable ma- 
terial to spread the conflagration of yourself, you have purchased all 
the fuel which could inflame to fury the inextinguishable passions, 
which are only exceeded in extent and intensity by the boiling cal- 
dron in which the reprobates are buried in eternal torment. There 
was nothing that could encourage, flatter, foment human passion, 
which you did not purchase, by land and sea, to increase your guilt 
and to swell the anger of God. 

Reprobate — I did not know till after my death the extent of my 
offences. 

Christ — You must remember that I was spit upon, mocked, 
blindfolded, bruised for you — flogged for you. The stroke of the 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 7X 

hammer on Calvar3' was heard in heaven, as they nailed Me to the 
Cross. You cannot forget it was for you I died. I called to My 
Father for relief in My agony. No ! no ! no ! was the reply I heard 
through the closed gates of heaven. You were among the number 
that put Me to death : yet I held My arms open for your forgiveness 
till your last breath. And your greatest crime during your whole life 
is your present daring declaration, that you did not know your guilt 
was so great, although I saw you in Jerusalem : I had my eyes fixed 
on you in the hall of Pilate ; I saw you at the pillar — you held the 
scourge. It was you that fitted the nails to My hands and feet, 
plunged the spear in My side, and jibed and mocked Me as My last 
breath was escaping from My quivering lip. You soon shall see Me 
on My throne of judgment, passing sentence on your scarlet crimes, 
while Hell moans and Heaven weeps at the terrors of INIy anger. 

Reprobate — Did You not see my damnation before I was born ? 

Christ — Not till after j-our death. 

Reprobate — Did You not see all futurity from the beginning of 
eternity? You therefore saw my perdition before I was born. 
Hence, my damnation is inevitable. 

Christ — The power which I possess of seeing all future things 
from eternity is a property of My own ; but this property of Mine 
has no influence whatever on your actions — My foresight does not 
influence your liberty, no more than your seeing other men in- 
fluences their free actions. Precisely the same. 

Reprobate — Did not You decide my fate before I was born ; and 
hence my perdition became inevitable ? 

Christ — No. I have seen all futurity from all eternity. The 
decree is written on the walls of heaven. But I saw it in order, and 
in the order in which it occurred. Hence. I saw your birth _^)\si!, be- 
cause it was first ; then I saw your life and actions next, because 
\h&j folloived your birth : then I saw your death, because it followed 
your life ; and then I pass judgment the last, because it is the last. 
But I did not pass sentence before your birth, because I cotrLD not 
SEE your death before your birth — it is impossible. Hence, I pass 
sentence like any othre judge ; having first seen your life and death. 

Reprobate — But is not Your decision a^jce-judgment? 

Christ — No. Mine is ajjos^-judgment : being decided o/lferyour 
death in My eternal decree. 



72 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Keprobate — But could my judgment be different? 
Christ — Certainly, if your life were different. The whole case 
can be settled in one word — you have yourself made your case. I 
have merely judged it. If I made your case, you are right, but I 
have not directly or indirectly made your case — your case is your 
oion independent free act. 

Damned Soul — Cannot the penalty of millions of years atone for 
my sin ? 

Christ — No : years are time — that is, the stroke of ajDendulum : 
and you know the stroke of a clock cannot blot out a mortal offence 
I to God. 

Damned Soul — Cannot Your Father forgive us ? 
Christ — My Father will not, cannot forgive you. "When I was 
on earth I joublished to all mankind, that without faith it was im- 
possible to please God. I declared that no one could be saved 
without my blood : you have died not only loithout My blood, 
you died against My blood : you died without living faith : with- 
out any faith : now, in the insane supposition that you should be 
received into heaven, I am made a liar before the whole Court 
of Heaven : I am ungodded on My own throne, and hence I should 
stand on the gates of heaven and resist your entrance into My 
kingdom with all the power of My Godhead. You therefore can- 
not be saved : your relief therefore from hell to heaven is not 
within the possibilities of the truth, the justice, and the mercy of 
My Father : you ask Me to stand in opposition to Myself : to 
make the abyss to be hell and heaven at the same time. 

Damned Soul — Cannot ages of fire blot out my sin against 
God? 

Christ — You know that fire cannot change vice into virtue, nor 
change the anger of God ; and hence fire cannot burn out mortal 
guilt. 

Damned Soul — And is there no hope ? 
Christ — No possible hope. 

Damned Soul — Hell contains thi'ee infinities : infinity of God's 
anger, infinity of fire, infinity of duration — what have I done to de- 
serve these three infinities : a poor finite creature ? 

Christ — You have committed the greatest crime that time or 
I eternity has ever beheld — you have imbued your hands in the blood 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 73 

of the Saviour of the world. You are an accomplice in the death of 
Christ : the death of the God-Man. 

Damned Soul — How can I be an accomplice ? 

Christ — If one man killed another man, or thousands of men 
aided in putting him to death, each is guilty, and all are guilty, equally 
guilty, and hence all who commit deliberately mortal sin, have de- 
liberately aided in nailing Christ to the Cross. You are, therefore, 
an accomplice in the death of Christ — stained with His blood : a 
crime so great that the fire of hell can never burn it out. 

Damned Soul — And is there no change in hell ? 

Christ — No change. The kingdom of hell is as well founded as 
the kingdom of heaven — one is founded on My power and My 
mercy : the other is founded on My power and My anger : and I am 
as much God in punishing vice as rewarding virtue. You mistake 
the Trinity : We did not make or create Ourselves : We are the 
living essence of things : essential first beings, loving living virtue, 
and hating living vice ; We are the essence of life ; We cannot die : 
you mistake Us ; every mortal sin, unatoned, unrepented, is fixed 
in permanent malice ; it burns forever like a lake of pitch, and must 
remain eternally unextinguished : and an act of meritorious virtue 
is, on the other hand, as irremovable in glory as the pillars of the 
throne of God, and must last forever; you mistake Us, and you 
mistake yourselves. 

This is the first day of eternity to you — time is past — everything 
will now wear a different appearance — eternity is so large and time 
is so small, that the death of Adam, the first man, and the death of 
the last man here to-day, are two points so close, that they seem to 
touch : your crimes will now surprise yourselves : the sanctity of 
God will astound you ; sin will appear under new terrors, and heaven 
will look happier than your fancy had ever painted it — everything 
will now appear in its own true colors. You have oppressed and 
killed the poor : you have corrupted the innocent and you have filled 
hell with the victims of your lust ; your scandals have blasted faith 
and converted the Gospel into shame ; you have dared the Trinity 
at Our own gates ; you jibed death, defied hell, and mocked heaven ; 
My blood is thick on your scarlet hands ; your damnation is fixed ; 
your tempestuous bed is made in hell, and you are doomed to writhe 
in eternal fire ; I lived for you : I died for you : I watched you. 



74 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

once My own child, to save you ; the saints, the angels followed you 
to the gates of hell, to intercept you and to gain your soul : you re- 
sisted all and damned yourself in spite of the prayers of the living, 
the cries of the saints, and the burning petition of the Saviour of the 
world ; the happy fields of Paradise now lie before you for the last 
time ; but you never shall again behold them ; the million suns that 
bum on the eternal hills shall never again shed their lustre on you ; 
the peace, and joys, and gloi-y of heaven you shall never taste ; the 
companions of your youth whom you loved shall never see jou : and 
you shall be cast away from God as far as omnipotent anger can 
throw you. 

Eeprobate souls, darkness and torture are now your eternal lot ; 
and when the gates of your fieiy prisons shall close forever between 
you and Me, storms shall rage over lakes and oceans of fire and 
brimstone, where the consuming waves shall never reach the shore, 
and where one ray of light shall never burst through the infinite 
chaos that lies between you and Me. Your position, in place of 
being the source of pain to the blessed, is a relief: heaven is freed 
from your blasphemies : your scandals can no longer grieve the 
Holy Ghost : the Cross can no more suffer for your infidelities : and 
My wounds will no more bleed afresh from your apostasies : heaven 
rejoices in your damnation : time and sin are at an end : the saints 
and angels love what I love, and they hate what I hate : and as the 
gates of hell close on you, in eternal banishment, heaven will raise a 
jubilee of joy at your never-ending sentence : Begone, ye accursed, 
into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Then turn- 
ing to the blessed with a countenance full of sweetness, He exclaims : 
Gome, ye blessed of My Father , jjossess the kingdom p)rej}ared for yoti 
from the foundation of the loorld. 

Dearest Brethren, the coming certainty of this awful day, the de- 
claration of Christ announcing His anger and sentence, ought to 
chraige the life of many a sinner : and I pray God that these words 
of mine may sink like a burning brand into the hearts of those who 
hear me. 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 75 



Dr, Cahill To Five Protestant Clergymen. 



Lettekkenny, May SOtli, 1.853. 
Reverend Sir, — We, the undersigned, having heard you deliver a controversial 
lecture this evening in the chapel of Letterkenny, feel it our solemn duty, as minis- 
ters of God and embassadors of Christ, to protest against the doctrines set forth by 
you, as unscriptural and contrary to tlie teaching of the Catholic Church. We 
would therefore take the liberty of inviting you to a public discussion, to be carried 
on in a kind and Christian spirit, in which we call upon you to prove that the doc- 
trines contained in the twelve supplementary articles of the creed of Pope Pius IV. 
were ever propounded and set forth In the Christian Church as a creed before the 
year 1564. 

Secondly — We invite you to bring on the platform your rule of faith, and give us 
your Church's authorized interpretation of the sixth, ninth, aud tenth chapters of 
St. Paul to the Hebrews — -or, if you prefer it, your Church's authorized exposition 
of the simplest portions of the Holy Writ — the Lord's prayer. 

Thirdly — Wc invite you and any number of your brother priests to meet an equal 
number of clergy of the Church of England, to prove the assertions you used in 
endeavoring to establish the unscriptural doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. 
Trusting you will receive the iuWtation in the same spirit in which it is dictated, 
we remain yours faithfully in Christ, 

F. GooLD, Archdeacon of Kaphoe. 

J. Irwin, Rector of Aughaninshin. 

R. Smith, Curate of Cornwall. 

J. W. Irwin, Curate of Eaymohy. 

J. LiNSKEA, Glenalla. 



I^EVEEEjSTD sirs, — I have the honor to acknowledge the 
§1^ receipt of your polite note, dictated in a spirit of great 
f^ courtesy, and having stamped on it the clear impress of the 
■I distinguished character of the gentlemen whose names it 

bears. I shall then at once proceed to give a hasty reply to those 
passages in your respected communication which demand commen- 
tary from me. 

Firstly, then, I solemnly deny, and conscientiously protest against 



76 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

your unauthorized assumption of calling yourselves "the ministers of 
God and embassadors of Christ ; " and I complain loudly of your 
most unjustifiable intrusion in designating your modern local con- 
venticle by the name of the " Catholic Church." Gentlemen, I 
assure you I do not mean, even remotely, to utter one offensive 
sentiment to you personally by telling you that you are libelling 
God and calumniating the Apostles in using this language. You 
are, on the contrary, the ecclesiastical ministers of the British Par- 
liament, you are the clerical embassadors of the Queen of England, 
and you are the rebel children of the most terrific apostasy the world 
ever saw. The Thirtj^-nine articles of your creed (which learned 
Protestants call contradictory and incongruous) are the accidental 
result of a majoi'ity of voices in the British senate-house of that day. 
This act of Parliament forms the preface of your Book of Common 
Prayer, and the decisions of that Parliamentary session are unavow- 
edly the very basis and the theological title of the Anglican creed, 
as expressed in these Articles. In point of fact, and according to 
the language of the English Parliament, that creed should be appro- 
priately called a " bill," like any other Parliamentary bill passed by 
a majority in that house. Beyond all doubt, its proper name should 
be " the Protestant Eeligion Bill," or some other such designation, 
proceeding, as it does, professedly, and originating officially from 
the decision of the senate-house, and from the authority of the 
Crown. The authority does not even pretend to be derived from 
Christ, as it acknowledges itself to be fallible, and, of course, pro- 
gressive and human. 

And the Prime Minister of England can lay aside any of your 
present opinions when he tiiinks fit, as was recently proved in the 
case of the Rev.* Mr. Gorham; and the Queen can annul the united 
doctrinal decision of your national convocation at her pleasure. 
Argue this case as you will, and call this authority by whatever 
name you please, there it is, the supreme arbiter of your Church, 
the essential sanction and source of your faith. Thus, in point of 
fact, you pray to God as the Premier likes ; and you believe in God 
as the Queen pleases ; and you multiply or diminish the articles of 
your " Religion Bill" as the Parliament decides. You are, there- 
fore, judicially and officially, the very creatures of the State ; and 
you wear your surplices and preach by precisely the same autliority 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 77 

with which a midshipman wears his sword, or a Queen's counsel 
appears in a silk gown ; you derive your jurisdiction from an 
authority at which the very Mohammedans staud in stupid amaze- 
ment — viz. : an authority which places a child in a cradle, a young 
girl in her teens, or a toothless old hag in the place of the twelve 
Apostles, standing in the footsteps of Christ, the seat of wisdom, 
the oracle of divine truth, and the expounder of Revelation. Except 
that we know this statement to be a fact from undeniable evidence, 
no man living could ever think that an}^ man in his senses would 
submit to such an outi'age on the human understanding. Sir Thomas 
More, the Chancellor of England, with thousands of others, pre- 
ferred to die at the block sooner than submit to this mockery of 
God. This is the ludicrous jurisdiction under which you teach and 
preach ; but to call yourselves " the ministers of God and the embas- 
sadors of Christ," is an act of such reckless forgetfulness of your 
position (in refei'ence to jurisdiction), as to set all the delicacies of 
truth and fact at defiance in a matter of the most public and palpable 
notoriety ; in truth, it is unbecoming effrontery. 

Again, all Christians of all denominations admit that the repeated 
pledges and promises of Christ guarantee the indestructible existence 
of a true Church forever on the earth. The word of God the Father, 
fixing our sun in our skies forever, is not more clear and emphatic 
than the word of God the Son in placing the true Church in a per- 
manent unclouded existence on the earth forever. At the time of 
your separation there was only this one universal Church on earth ; 
there being but one in existence, it must have been this true one so 
guaranteed. You have avowedly separated from this Church ; and 
at that time, in order to mark the doctrinal character of your con- 
duct, you called yourselves by the appropriate name t)f Protestants. 
You, therefore, at that time, resigned your title to the Catholic 
Church, which you abandoned. You rebelled against her authority, 
and from that hour to this you stand expelled from her spiritual 
territory, and excommunicated by her judicial penalties. On that 
occasion you severed yourself from the source of all her spiritual 
power, and broke the link that bound you to the long chain of apos- 
tolic jurisdiction. Will you kindly inform the world when and 
where did you become reunited to that Church? You now call 
yourselves " Catholic ! " Or are you now beginning to be ashamed 



78 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of the word " Protestant ? " You see that this word argues the want 
of legithnate title to the Christian inheritance, and you are trying to 
insert a word by fraud into your forged deed. 

Why do you not use the other three marks of the true Church, 
and call yourselves, "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic?" Ah, 
reckless as you are in your assumption, you are afraid of the jibes 
of the historian to assvmie the other three marks. As long as your 
interminable (750) changes in faith are recorded, it would be inju- 
dicious to invest your Church with the attribute of unity ; as long as 
the public reads the plunder of the abbeys and hears the universal 
spoliation of the poor, while the I'ed gibbet of Elizabeth surmounts 
your communion table, and while your modern towers publish 3'onr 
recent origin, it would be drawing rather too largely on the public 
credulity to stifle this glaring evidence of your sins and character, 
and to call yourselves, "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic." No, 
no ; you are too clever and discerning to attempt this palpable 
imposture ; and hence you are content to assume slyly the single 
term of "Catholic ; " and thus you endeavor to regain the place you 
have forfeited, and repair the connection you have broken. But, 
gentlemen, this dodge will not do ; you may impose on your own 
flocks, who don't know you as well as we do ; but as long as I am 
placed as a sentinel at the ivy doors of the old Church, you shall not 
enter under false colors. Come in your own clothes as Protestant 
ministers. Parliamentary embassadors, modern Biblemen, from a 
petty district, but you shall not assume the mark of the universality 
of time and place Avhile I am present. Like sparrows hatched in an 
eagle's nest, I shall teach you that, although you have been born 
near us, you have neither the shape, color, or genealogy of the roj'al 
breed of the Apostles, under whose wings your Church has been 
fraudulently introduced and nurtured into an illegitimate existence. 

Whenever, therefore, you may in future honor me with any com- 
munication, may I beg you will announce yourselves in your Protest- 
ant profession ; appear in your own modern dress, assume your own 
Pai'liamentary titles, and do not add to your fonner prevarications 
to the living by coming now in the end of time laden with the spoils 
of the dead. Dress yourselves like Luther and Calvin, and Knox 
and Cranmer; come with a sword in your hand, like Zuinglius, and 
with an axe, like your first apostles ; don't assume the holy cross ; do 



REV. DR CAHILL. 79 

not put on the robes of Jerome or Chrysostom ; do not, for shame, 
rob the dead of their hoary honors ; do not appear in the unsullied 
robes of the Apostles, whom your ancestors have betrayed; do not 
wear the crowns of More and Fisher, won on the block which your 
GosjDel had erected. This passage brings me in presence of the 
second part of your note. 

In consequence of the existence of an infallible authority framing 
our laws and promulgating our Faith, it would be clearly an act of 
the most palpable inconsistency to subject to your decision, or to the 
award of a public meeting of fallible men, the doctrines already fixed 
by an unerring tribunal. You ai'C true to your principles in seeking 
and yielding to this decision, since private judgment is your first 
principle ; but I cannot subject my Faith to such a standard, believ- 
ing, as I do, that a living authority has been permanently appointed 
in the Church of Cimst, invested with a command from Heaven to 
teach all men, and sustained by the official presence of the Holy 
Ghost, as a legislative guarantee for the immutable truth of its decis- 
ions. There are no passages in the Scriptures, on any subject of 
Divine faith, put forward in stronger or more emphatic language 
than these parts of Revelation which enforce the permanent, un- 
changeable existence and practicable agency of this tribunal. The 
existence of Christ, or the facts of the Cross, the Eesurrection, and 
Ascension, are not expressed in a clearer ofiicial enactment than the 
record of this living court of infallible decision. I can no more 
doubt the existence of the Saviour, than disbelieve this official pre- 
rogative of the Church of Christ. I believe the one with the same 
precise amount of evidence I believe the other ; and if you bring a 
doubt on the authority of this court, you necessarily call in question 
all the other parts of the record of salvation. So perfectly logical 
is the inference, that history sustains my assertions on this vital 
point ; and it is quite true to say that since the fatal period of your 
separation, and since you preached the overthrow of this first princi- 
ple, you have opened the flood-gates of latitudinarianism, and filled 
every Protestant country in Europe with wild rationalism and naked 
infidelity. 

In a thousand years hence, when Protestantism will be only rec- 
ollected in name, like Ariauism or any of the other varieties of 
human wickedness or folly, the future ecclesiastical historian will 



80 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

■write the thrilling record ; namely, that of all the phases of irrelig- 
ion which have appeared on the earth, the Anglican heresy has 
inflicted the deepest wound on Revelation, from its encouragement 
to human pride and its official flattery of human passion. Human 
reason, in its practical workings, has never been the same in the 
same country, the same age, or even the same man. If we except 
the truths of mathematical science, human reason is ever changing, 
and I think it ought to be readilj^ admitted that a God of rigid jus- 
tice and truth could never build the unerring enactments of revela- 
tion and salvation on a shifting basis of such a variable construction. 
"Within the last twenty-five years I have seldom read the proceed- 
ings of any Protestant assembly on matters of religion, in which the 
principal topics have not been, viz. : "The usurped infallibility of 
the Church of Rome, and the new articles of faith of the Roman 
Church." The ancient Pi'otestant clergy of Ireland did not utter 
these falsehoods ; they lived contented with their titles, and enjoyed 
their glebes and drank their claret without this eternal calumny of 
the plundered Catholics. But within the last quarter of a century a 
swarm of young clerical aspirants invade all the public places, stand 
in all the thoroughfares, and are heard on the four winds roaring and 
bawling, wherever you turn, against the Church of Rome. They 
are to be seen at all the Protestant print-shoi3S, book-stands, rail- 
road stations, bazaars, excursion trips, botanical reunions ; and I 
dare say you will admit the powerful fact that they have no conver- 
sation, no entertainment for all who have the misfortune to come 
within the range of their clerical contact, save one ceaseless, inde- 
cent abuse, misrepresentation and calumny of the principles of the 
Catholic creed. And I am quite willing to admit that these gentle- 
men are persons of finished education, and of delicate truth, and of 
elegant courtesy in their social character on most other points ; but, 
in reference to Catholicity, they are not ashamed to utter statements 
too foolish to be noticed, or too gross to be told. Having appar- 
ently no parochial duties to discharge, their sole occupation seems 
to be calumniating their Catholic neighbors and forging misstate- 
ments of the Catholic clergy, who never speaiv a word of oflence to 
them, either in our public or private intercourse. We cannot in 
these days instruct our people without public insult, nor can we 
defend our doctrines from misrepresentation without sickening chal- 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 81 

lenges from school-boy declaimers, — raw, jejune clerical graduates 
seeking notoriety in the service of God ( ?) by falsehood, malignitj% 
and sedition. This is a painful state of society. The conduct of 
your brethren on this subject has long since formed the topic of 
public condemnation even throughout Europe, and has by its excess 
and extravagance nauseated the public taste, and beyond all doubt 
has raised the spirit of inquiry in the detection of this indecent im- 
posture, and now universal exposure. 

I am led into these observations by your remarks on the creed of 
Pius IV., in which you assert that novelties have been introduced 
into our faith. 

Gentlemen, in all the public speeches and writings of your breth- 
ren, they all (I hope not through calumnious design) make one com- . 
mon mistake, viz. : You call " a new decision of a council " by the 
name of a new act of faith, — an addition to the old creed. It is not 
so. The new decision of a council is rather a sign of an old doctrine 
than the evidence of a new one ; it is the collected expression of the 
old belief of the Church embodied in a new decree ; so that, so far 
from being an evidence of a new thing, it is, on the contrary, an 
inevitable demonstration of an old thing. It is the official appli- 
cation of an old truth and pi-inciple to some new heretic, or some new 
error; so that while the heretic is new to whom it is addressed, and 
the case is new to which it is applied, the principle and the truth so 
applied is ipso facto already known as the statute law of the Church ; 
and ten thousand new cases may be settled by one old princiiDle, just 
as the Chancellor settles the unnumbered new cases of his court 
without adding one tittle to the old statute law of England. When 
Moses brought down from Mount Sinai the ten commandments em- 
bodied in a written decree from God, will any man assert that this 
was the first time for twenty-five centuries that men received the 
commandments of God ? Certainly it was the first written decision 
of God that men ever saw ; but will any man say that this was a new 
faith or morality received under the Theoarchy, and that this was the 
first time when God forbade the crimes of murder, adultery, rob- 
bery, perjury and idolatry, etc. ? If, then, our doctrine of an infal- 
lible tribunal be true, as it is, it follows that a general council, 
directed by the Holy Ghost, stands in similar circumstances (as far 
as Revelation goes) with this Theoarchy, and hence that these new 



82 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

decisions, so far from being acts of faith, are, on the contrary, the 
best evidence of the ab-eady universally received opinions on the 
point decided. All the new decisions of the Church against Arian- 
ism and Pelagianism, and the decisions on the consubstantiality of 
the Son with the Father, and all the decrees on the nature and jier- 
son of Christ, are all nearly expressed in one sentence of the creed : 
— "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, who was conceived by 
the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, dead 
and buried, rose again on the third clay from the dead, and ascended 
into heaven. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," etc., etc. 
This short sentence, with some few additional texts, form, if I may 
so speak, the statute laws on the varied decisions alluded to. In 
fact, all the new decisions such as your brethren allude to, and such 
as you have referred to in the point at issue, are merely so many 
legitimate deducibles from the record of Revelation subjected to this 
competent authority, and settled and published by a decree founded 
on the ancient truths of Christ's Gospel as taught by the Apostles. 

The Catholic rule of fiiith, therefore, is the word of God inter- 
preted and taught by this living authority, as it was from the begin- 
ning ; and this rule is so clear, so obvious, so comprehensive, and 
so easily attainable, that, with a penny catechism in your hand, and 
in the society of a priest, the accredited officer, you can learn, to 
your perfect satisfaction, our entire faith, in construction, plan, and 
indefectible legislative guarantees, within the short space of one 
hour ; and the authorized version of any portion of Holy Writ is to 
be learned, not so much from its philosophical or philological con- 
struction, as from its inferential adjustment, and its substantial 
agreement with the known truths already believed and taught in 
connection with the passages under the examination referred to. 
We do not receive our faith from disputing, contentious school- 
masters, but from ordained priests ; we are occupied with the 
substance, not the names of things ; we take our faith from the 
guaranteed inspiration of the Holy Ghost, not from the inflections 
and rules of grammar ; and as the incarnation and the death of our 
Lord are beyond our reason, we have no idea of consulting that 
same reason in laws beyond its reach, no more than the mysteries 
"which it cannot comprehend. 

In conclusion, I beg to assure you that I have felt much compli- 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 83 

meiited by your attendance at nay lectures on the Holy Sacrifice of 
the Mass, and I have felt rather honored by the united note of the 
five Protestant clergymen, transmitted to me through the courtesy 
of the Protestant Archdeacon of Raphoe, and the brother-in-law of 
our late Viceroy. I have not, I hope, in any words which escaped 
me at that lecture, uttered any sentiment which could offend ; and I 
here disclaim again intending to say one word in this note (beyond 
my own professional duty) to give the smallest uneasiness to gentle- 
men towards whom I feel much personal respect, and to whom I beg 
unfeignedly to offer the expression of high and distinguished con- 
sidex'atiou. 

I have the honor to be, Rev. Sirs, your obedient servant, 

D. W. Cahill, D. D. 

P. S. — As you have gratuitously originated this cori'espondence, 
you can have no claim on me for its continuance ; and, therefore, I 
i-espectfuUy decline taking any further notice of any letters which 
you may do me the honor to send me in future. 



84: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Letter of the Rev. Dr, Cahill to the Right Hon, 
The Earl of Derby, 



New Brighton, Saturday, October 21, 1852. 

^^^^Y LOED EARL, — Some few months ago our gracious 
l^jT^ Queen, in a speech from the throne, very emphatically an- 
fe^^^ nounced her royal determination to uphold the principles of 
"T the Protestant Church, and she called on her servants there 
assembled, in her presence, to assist her in maintaining the liberties 
of the Protestant Constitution. There must be, my Lord, in the 
royal mind some hidden fear of this Church being in danger, in 
order to account for the large space which this idea has taken up in 
the royal oration. If this declaration had been made by your Lord- 
ship, or by any one of the present Ministry, it would still command 
an important attention ; but when it proceeds from the head of your 
Church — from the ecumenical source of all Protestant truth, it 
comes before the world invested with all the realities of Parliamen- 
tary gravity and English history. For the first time in my life, I 
do agree with the sentiments deduced from a roj'al speech ; and I 
do, therefore, believe that your Church is in imminent danger at 
the present moment ; and I believe, moreover, that neither her most 
gracious Majesty, with all her royal power, my Lord John Russell, 
with the base Whigs, nor your Lordship, with the most judicious 
combination of Whig and Tory which your skill in Parliamentary 
chemistry can produce, will be able to stay much longer the down- 
fall of an institution which is a libel on God's Gospel, a fortress for 
public injustice, and the scandalous disturber of our national peace. 
The danger to be apprehended, however, will not proceed, in the 
first instance, from an extei'ual enemy ; it will come from her long 



KEY. DR. CAIIILL. 85 

internal rottenness ; and the public shame, and the public common 
sense, and the public indignation will soon be seen struggling for 
the mastery in levelling with the earth, and eradicating from the 
soil, this anti-Christian monster, which has been reared on the plun- 
dered food of the widow and the orphan, and which now makes its 
enormous daily meals and annual feasts on the life-blood of the entire 
nation. 

The long silence of the Catholics under your shameful and shame- 
less calumnies, and our superhuman endurance under savage Pai'lia- 
mentary insults and lies, such as are actually unknown in any other 
country in the whole woi'ld, have had the effect of encouraging our 
insatiable enemies, in place of mitigating their fanatical ferocity. 
The oblivion which our writers have cast in charity over the first 
flagrant iniquities of your Church has been misunderstood by your 
professional bigots, who, like a swarm of locusts, crowd every 
thoroughfare in the Empire, enabling the passengers of all nations to 
read, in the malignant domination of their brows, that the hatred of 
Catholicity, the fury of unappeasable malignity, and not the mild 
spirit of Christianity, is the predominant feeling of their hearts, and 
the very mainspring of their entire conduct. The Catholic public, 
too, have forgotten the early pedigree of the Reformation ; and 
have, therefore, considerably relaxed in their watchfulness against 
their deadly foes ; and hence the public mind must be again roused 
to a universal resistance against a congregation of calumniators, 
who, not content with living on the plunder of our ancestors, are 
engaged, year after year, in maligning their victims, spreading 
abroad uncharitableness, disturbing the public peace, and positively, 
and without any doubt, disturbing the name and material interests 
of England throughout the entire world. 

As Lord John Russell and your Lordship have been the principal 
promoters of this strange evangelism, I have decided on addressing 
to you twelve letters on the subject just referred to. They shall be 
divided into distinctions, in which I shall prove beyond all doubt — 
Firstly, the unscriptural enormities and the theological incongruities 
of these Protestant principles which you say are now endangered ; 
Secondly, I shall demonstrate beyond all contradiction, that this 
Protestant Constitution has committed the largest crime of plunder- 
ing the poor ever recorded in history ; and. Thirdly, I shall enume- 



86 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

rate, to the satisfaction of every impartial man, the historical records 
by which this Church is charged with spilling more blood of innocent, 
and defenceless, and unofi'ending Catholics, than has ever been shed 
by the most ruthless tyrant that ever crimsoned the page of human 
woe. In the treatment of this subject, I wish to inform you that I 
mean no offence to the present generation of generous-hearted, hon- 
est Englishmen ; my charges are not against individuals, but against 
the anti-Christian system of which they are made the wretched dupes. 
Nor shall I found my observations upon exclusively Catholic 
authority, or on hearsay, however respectable the testimony, or on 
loose historical assertion. I shall quote all my proofs from your 
own great historians, fi'om the Protestant Synods of Germany, 
Switzerland, Holland and France ; and I shall complete my demon- 
strations from the Acts of the English Parliament. I shall not con- 
fine my views on the hoiTors of j'our evangelical system to Great 
Britain and unfortunate Ireland. I shall trace them through 
Northern and Central Eurojie ; and I shall place before the Christian 
world the clear fact, viz., that in whatever country Protestantism has 
been introduced in the room of Catholicity, there may be traced all 
the maddening disorders which have almost ever accompanied and 
followed it ; namely, ferocious bigotry, relentless persecution, san- 
guinary atrocities, social disunion, and universal, wasting, jxiblic 
brand of beggary and national distress, graven by the ruthless bigot 
on the heart, and the bones, and the marrow of the wretched, sub- 
dued Catholic. 

And if I shall fulfil faithfully these my preliminary promises, there 
is no honorable English or Irish Protestant (who will take the 
trouble to read my pi-oofs) who can, as a scholar, a gentleman, and 
a Christian, be reasonably angry with me for exposing to the public 
indignation a system calling itself the Gospel of Christ, and which, 
on examination, will be found an iniquitous aggregate of hypocrisy, 
lies, rebellion, spoliation, murder and blasphemy. I own it requires 
much deliberate reflection before these grave charges should be made 
against your National Church, and addressed to so exalted a person 
as the Earl of Derby. I feel this responsibility, and I fully conceive 
my position ; but I again repeat my charges, and I shall forfeit all 
claim to truth, if I do not perfectly substantiate every point I have 
adduced. It is with feelinirs of tremulous confusion that the historian 



KEV. DR. CAHILL. 87 

of the present day will even attempt to write details of the crimes of 
this infamous band of anti-Christian monsters ; and hence, who can 
describe what must have been the bewildering, the shocking, the 
racking woes of the persecuted past generation, which witnessed and 
bled under their terrific realities. 

The first unparalleled imposture which the ." Reformation " invented 
and which it has practised to this day, was the self-appointment and 
self-conseci"ation of Henry VIII. to assume the title of " Head of the 
Church." One might suppose that the man who robbed the convents 
of Englishmen to the amount of millions of money, built and 
secured by the ancient laws of the realm, would be ashamed to 
appear before his countrymen, stained as his character was with this 
public profanation ; one might believe that a monster who had 
divorced three wives and beheaded two (one of them probably his 
own daughter) would be afraid to let the eye of mortal see his hands 
reeking with the blood of his innocent victims. Through all the 
past history of mankind, if such a demon succeeded in escaping the 
arm of public justice, or the hand of the avenging assassin, he fled 
from human intercourse to bury his guilty head and racking con- 
science in the lonely cell of perpetual penance, in order to expiate 
the thrilling enormity of his black crimes. 

But your apostle, the first head of your Church, seemed i-ather to 
rise than sink by his iniquities ; they appear rather to qualify than 
incapacitate your Gospel founder for his exalted siiiritual post ; and 
hence, he stands before your tabernacle with his red hands lifted in 
prayer to God ! Yes, in prayer to God, your accredited proto- 
apostle, your appointed bishop, and your consecrated Pope ! the 
guardian of innocence, the model of virtue, the terror of vice, the 
teacher of Gospel truth, the ornament of religion, the standard of 
evangelical perfection, the infallible guide to Heaven, the successor 
( of the Apostles, and the Vicegerent of Christ himself on earth ! He 
appointed and consecrated himself (Act Par., 1538) Pope and Head 
of the Church ; and he appointed Tom Cromwell (Act 1533) his 
" Vicegerent in spirituals; " and he gave him, as his Vicar-General, 
a commission, with nineteen sub-commissioners, named by his 
"English Holiness," to report on the discipline and moral conduct 
and faith of all the religious orders of England ! The only parallel 
that could be devised to equal this incomprehensible farce on Chris- 



88 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tianity would be to see the Devil asceud the Mount where our Lord 
delivered His first sermon, and to hear him address the multitude on 
the Eight Beatitudes, in mimicry of our Saviour, without any attempt 
during his discourse to either conceal " his cloven foot or tail " from 
the congregation. 

Do you wonder, sir, why we Catholics laugh and shudder at this, 
your first hierarchy ? Can you be surprised why a learned Catholic 
trembles at this blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, this mockery of 
Christianity, this jesting with God, this sporting with the Gospel, 
this jibing with damnation? There is nothing like this scene of 
palpable mimicry of Christ and the Apostles to be found in the 
entire record of the most insane infidelit}\ It surpasses in atrocious 
and tragic infamy anything that has ever happened in the whole 
world ; and it stands before all mankind as the first page in the 
charter of your religion, the inauguration of your hierarchy, and the 
undoubted source of the " Reformation." There were many faithful, 
courageous Englishmen, who resisted this monstrous iniquity, and 
if you wish to learn their names, go to the prisons of your Apostle, 
where thousands of your countrymen died in confinement ; go to 
glorious France, where hundreds of your relatives fled for safety ; 
and, sir, go to the reeking block, where you can read in the mar- 
tyred blood of the illustrious More, the venerable Fisher, and in the 
shameful murder of the noble Countess of Salisbury. Read there 
the origin of your creed, the law of your Gospel, the decalogue of 
your ethics. 

If these astounding scenes were enacted under the excitement of 
mere popular or mere political fury, they should not find a place in 
this letter to your Lordship, which is intended for the discussion of 
the religious foundation of your Chiu-ch ; but they were the acts of 
Henry, as your ecclesiastical superior (see Act), they wei-e executed 
in the name and under the sanction of this new Church ; as such they 
were agreed to by theDrummonds, and theRussells, and the Derby s 
of that day of English infamy ; and in the preambles of the Acts of 
Parliament, the Assemblj^ sat in delilieratiou " iu the Spirit of the 
Holy Ghost," and hence, these acts of Ileury form, without contra- 
diction, a record of your ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and not of j^our 
political history. There is no generous, candid English Protestant, 
at the present day, who, I believe, does not blush at the recital of 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 89, 

these atrocities, and yet he lives contentedly and unconsciously under 
the very same hierarchal law ; is governed by the reigning monarch 
as the head of the Church ; pays religious obedience in faith and 
morals to the persons called, appointed, and commissioned to lead 
men's souls to heaven ; and all this by virtue of the royal prerogative, 
as the supreme spiritual authority of the realm. Take away the 
crimes of your first founder, and your present sj'stcm is perfectly 
the same — namely, human commission, human jurisdiction in the 
kingdom of Christ ! You might as well apply the laws of gravita- 
tion to the soul, as to adopt a temporal rule to produce spiritual 
results of grace. You might as well tell the world that original sin 
is remitted in baptism according to the laws of hydrostatics, as to 
assert that the queen or king of any country can give ex-officio a 
commission to save the souls of their subjects. 

It is the monarch alone of that spiritual kingdom who can frame 
its laws, appoint his officers, give them authority, define their duties, 
and decide rewards and punishments ; and this leads me to examine 
this principle of supremacy iu the reigu of Edward VI. Mr. Cobbett 
has already glanced at this subject ; but Mr. Cobbett was no theolo- 
gian — I am ; and he confined his views to England : I shall extend 
mine to every country in Europe whei'e your Gospel has been 
preached ; and I hei'cby humbly request of the embassadors of the 
Catholic Courts now resident in London (to each of whom I shall 
send a copy of this letter) , that they will so far have mercy on 
Ireland as to publish my proofs in each of their capitals, in order to 
infoi'm their nations of the insatiable injustice exercised towards us 
by the cruelty of the English Government, and to warn their coun- 
trymen of the danger of pei-mitting English missionaries and English 
spies to reside amongst them, calumniating their creed and revolu- 
tionizing their laws. 

One can scarcely avoid bursting out into a commingled torrent of 
indignation, contempt, and horror, against a band of plunderei's, 
infidels, and assassins, who, in the face of civilized Europe, could 
set up a child of ten years of age as Pope the Second, thus placing 
the nation in a position of spiritual ruin, and perpetuating the mad 
apostacy of the last reign. This, my Lord, is a new practical- 
spiritual phase of your Church. In the late reign, the King pro- 
claimed himself Poj^e ; but here we have a born Pope, a born Bishop,. 



00 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

an Apostle in swaddling-clothes, coming into the world with a mitre 
on his head, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost transmitted to him 
from his father Henry, like freehold property ; the grace of God 
running in the child's pure blood by virtue of the character and 
ecumenical position of his father ; a born saint, like his father, and, 
like a child born with a wooden leg, holding the crozier in his new- 
born hand, and wearing the mitre on his apostolic hereditary head ! 
Lord Derby, are you serious in belonging to a system of such dis- 
gusting, incompi'ehensible folly? You might as well assert that a 
hawk could beget a whale, as that a Bisbop could be naturally 
elaborated from the blood of Henry VIII. But this is not all ; this 
child-Pope made the " Book of Common Prayer," and almost entirely 
drew up the Thirty-nine Articles of what is called your creed. 

And what renders the thing so utterly shameful, is that this weak, 
sickly boy never, perhaps, saw the book, or read one of the Articles 
referred to ; so that this principle of the headship of the Church, 
which, in itself, is so ludicrous, is, besides all this, a most monstrous, 
notorious, palpable lie, as the baby-Pope, who is said to be head, 
has actually, and in point of fact, no more part in this Reformation- 
jugglery than the Gi'and Turk. The idea of a child making Articles 
of Faith, and composing prayers, through an Act of Parliament, as 
head of ChrisCs Church, is so palpably I'idiculous, that the Catholics 
at once ask you, "What insanity has come over you, to leave a learned 
old Pope and a Council of Bishops, in order to follow a child in a 
cradle and a Senate of shopkeepers ? " You decide religion as you 
decide the duty on j'our manufactures ; you settle the way to heaven 
as you fix the dii'cction of a turnpike road — namely, by a majority 
of votes ; and in the fiice of mankind you set up a baby in a cradle 
as the expounder of the Gospel, although it cannot read ; as the 
teacher of the Gospel, although it cannot speak ; and as the head of 
your Church in all its duties, although it has not got one idea in its 
head of any one thing in this world ! ! 

But the principle has to be examined in a new, astounding, third 
phase, viz. : — After the death of Edward, it is to be seen residing 
in a young woman of six-and-twenty years of age ! of course, she, 
too, is the sanctified descendant of the first head, Pope Henry. She, 
too, it seems, inherits her father's sanctity ; but the inspiration of 
the Holy Ghost does not fall upon her till the mature apostolic age 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 91 ■ 

of twenty-six. Blessed family ! to have men, M'omen, and children 
all born apostles — angels of grace. This lay Pope, this royal nun, 
this consecrated virgin, was the person who completed the inspiration 
of the far-famed Thirty-nine Articles of your Faith, not more than 
ten of which any educated respectable Protestant can conscientiously 
believe. Some of them are contradictory, others absurd, and two 
or three of them impossible. You, my Lord, who are so deepty 
read in canon-law as to see heresy in our cravats, and to read the 
violation of your constitutional laws in our shoes and hosiery, will 
you say how many of these articles do you believe ? I never knew 
any Protestant who had such a capacious draught of sanctity. Lord 
John Russell, although a Presbyterian, a Puseyitc, a Methodist, a 
Protestant, and a Pagan (as he has expunged baptism), does not 
perhaps believe from these five creeds of his so many of these Thirty- 
nine Articles of Godliness. I believe it to be true, my Lord, that, 
like razors made to sell, but not to shave, these Articles are made 
more for show than devotion. Excuse me, my Lord, if I, at the 
present moment, smile in your face, at seeing your name enrolled in 
such an incongruous, insane system of absurdity, imposture, and 
infidelity. 

But, my Lord, I am not quite done with this young lady Pope. 
There is a new feature in her apostolic reign, which we learn from 
jict of Parliament, passed in the year 1571, and in the thirteenth 
year of her reign, to which I refer you. In this Act, passed by her 
Parliament of Englishmen (manufacturers of foith),aud subscribed, 
of course, by her holy hand, as head of your Church, it was enacted 
(Christ protect us !) that the crown of England should descend, if 
she had no lawful heirs, to her "natural issue." Do you blush, Lord 
Derby, to see the crown of Alfred and Edward given by your evan- 
gelical Senate to such "an issue," by Act of Parliament! Do you 
blush to see the head of your church subscribe a public law of her 
own public shame ! signing her hand manual to an act that would 
degrade the most infamous inmate of the lowest of your London 
brothels — haunts of pollution ! I fancy it was this Act of Parlia- 
ment which Mr. Drummond read, on the night when he spewed the 
filth of his Reformation creed on the spotless consecrated Catholic 
virgins of Europe. He mistook them for the virgin head of your 
Church; ho did — the wretched old Reformer — he did mistake 



92 TIIEASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

them ; and in Iiis filthy language he was protected by the Speaker, 
and thus applauded hy the whole Senate of England. I say, sir, he 
was, and Catholic Europe should never forget the insult offered to 
their honor, their morality, and to their creed. My Lord, what do 
you now say, so far as I have gone as yet, to the early foundation of 
your '" Reformed Church ? " 

Amidst the records of the human race, there is a sense of shame 
in the most abandoned, which prompts them to conceal their per- 
sonal crimes — wretches who have lost every virtue and are immersed 
in every vice, have still left in their black hearts one small remnant 
of untainted nature ; namely, the inward feeling of condemnation of 
their own guilt. It is so in the most degraded wretch that expiates 
on the scaffold the enormities of a long obdurate life ; it is particu- 
larly so in woman, whose fine nature can never be utterly trampled 
out by vice but with her life ; and hence, when we find a Queen of 
a most powerful Empire the head of a Church calling itself Chris- 
tian, in the face of mankind, at the age of forty-nine, summon a 
Parliament to make her prospective shame legal by English law ! 
and when we behold herself in person sign the record of her own 
crime — she stands before the world the vilest miscreant, the most 
abandoned wretch, the most shameless monster, in woman form, 
that has ever stained the profligate records of either ancient or mod- 
ern infamy. We have borne your calumnies too long in charitable 
forbearance — we have abstained these many past years from repeat- 
ing the anti-Christian, the scandalous, incongruous tenets of your 
abhorrent creed — we have carefully kept from the hands of the 
rising generation of Ireland the records of your Church infamies — 
we have actually robbed our Irish children of the history of their 
fathers, in order to maintain peace with you ; but you have out- 
raged our endurance ; you and your Church party, both Whig and 
Tory, have aided in calumniating us, with an indecency of falsehood, 
that makes even bigotry blush ; and you forced us to come forward 
against our inclination to recommence the exposure of your blood- 
stained creed, which will end, as sure as I am penning these lines, 
in the overthrow of this iniquitous estal)lishment, and pei-haps in 
the degradation of your country. We shall no longer be silent on 
a system of religion where your piety is vice — where your Gospel 
is imposture — and the charter of your creed is hypocrisy, shame. 



REV. DR. CAR ILL. 93 

and s'm. In oi'der to meet the objection, "that these Acts of Par- 
liament had reference to the political, not the religious, prerogative 
of Elizabeth," 1 subjoin the words of the Synod of London : 

" The sovereign government of all her subjects, lay and clerical, belongs to her in 
all matters, without being subjected to any foreign power." 

Having thus glanced at the principle of the supremacy of your 
monarch, the next point in the regular order of your hierarchy is 
the ludicrous variety of your confessions of faith. From the year 
1530 to the year 1557, Protestantism has issued not less than 
eighteen confessions of faith — all different, and varying not only in 
general principles, but contradictory in most of the articles of faith, 
and contrary on the same points of belief in not less than four essen- 
tial dogmas of Christianity. Your confessions of faith are as fol- 
lows : — Augsburg, 1530; Geneva, 1531; France, 1534; Melanc- 
thon's Apology, 1535; Scotch confession, 1536; Smalcald, 1537 ; 
Dort, 1541; Szenger, 1543; Sendomar, 1546; Saxonic, 1551; 
Wurtemburg, 1552; Book of Concord, 1556; Explications repeat- 
ed, 1557. 

Now, my Lord, if any one of our theories in chemistry, in refer- 
ence to the anal3'sis or the products of any chemical agents, under- 
went eighteen diiferent, contradictory, and contrary demonstrations, 
is there any scientific scholar in the whole world who would take his 
oath that all these contrary theories were right ; and, moreover, 
who would hang, behead, and quarter any one who should refuse to 
take his oath in the same contrarieties? And if this doctrine in 
science would make all mankind shudder, will you say in \vhat 
language shall I attempt to explain your faith, which ascribes to the 
inspiration of the Holy Ghost eighteen different systems of the 
grossest lies, the most palpable contradictions, and absurd contra- 
rieties ? If the meanest man in Great Britain were charged with 
wilful prevarication on his oath, in his statement in eighteen differ- 
ent assertions, he would be branded as a debased wretch, a public 
perjurer ; and hence to ascribe this conduct to the Holy Ghost, in 
your eighteen sworn confessions of faith, is a depth of blasphemy, a 
hardihood of insane iniquity beyond the comprehension of the impar- 
tial observer; but like an old juggler swallowing a dozen of razors 
at a time, a feat which would kill twelve ordinary men, your long 



94 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

habit of unpunished infidelity has accustomed you to stand before 
the gates of heaven and call God a liar to His face. Saint Paul, 
endeavoring to express to us unity of Faith, could find no other 
image by which he could convey his belief, except by likening it to 
the unity of God, in that remarkable passage of Holy Writ, where 
he writes to the Ephesians — "one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism." 
As this language is so clear, it follows that there cannot exist in 
true faith any change, contradiction, or contrariety, any more than 
in the very being of God ; and it follows, moreover, from the clear- 
logic of the text, that two or more faiths are just as absurd as two 
or moi'e Gods. 

But Avhat signifies the testimony of St. Paul in comparison with 
that of Elizabeth, and what value can be attached to any scriptural 
record when placed in juxtaposition with an English Act of Parlia- 
ment ! When a Church has arrived so far in the mysteries of faith 
as to place at the head of all spiritual power a monster who has dis- 
carded three wives and murdered two ; when it can propose for the 
salvation of the soul a creed said to be made by a child in a cradle ; 
when a public sin against the sixth commandment by the head of a 
Church is made legal by an Act of the English Parliament ; when 
the Holy Ghost is publicly declared on oath to have published for 
the guidance of the soul in sanctity eighteen avowed systems of pal- 
pable lies in the short space of twenty-six years — I fearlessly say, 
if these records cannot be disputed, there is no candid Protestant 
who can complain if such a system of perjury, pollution, and blas- 
phemy be vigorously denounced before the indignation and the hor- 
ror of the entire Christian world. 

Notwithstanding these synodical contrarieties, we learn the strange 
doctrine from " the Synod of Charteron," that the entire varying 
Protestant communities of Europe are still "the one society" of true 
Christian believers ; that eighteen different "distinct things " are the 
self-same "one thing," is a proposition so utterly incomprehensible, 
as even to surpass the phenomenon of your supremacy. The only 
thing I ever read which can at all approach this article of your faith 
in point of absurdity, is the Dutch tragedy representing Adam about, 
to he created; at a cei'tain part of the tragedy, when all eyes are 
turned to the deep, solemn tragedian, who is about to perfoi'm the 
act of creation, Adam himself, the first man (though not yet crea- 



REV. DR. CAHILL. 95 

ted), comes out on the stage, with new doeskin breeches, boots, and 
spurs, to be created ! With these palpable absurdities you call your 
Church the spouse of Christ — a lie which makes the skin creep and 
the blood run cold to hear you connect with the name of the Saviour 
such an aggregate of obsceneness and imjiiety. From the first 3'ear 
of your foundation, through the three hundred years of your exis- 
tence, no three individuals of your co-religionists could agree in 
doctrine ; and at this moment you present to the laughing world a, 
congregation divided in all points, except the stereotype doctrine of 
"hatred of Catholicity." 

Lord John Russell, who can agree with almost any form of faith, 
cannot admit Baptism ; the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is paid 
£24,000 a year for the gigantic amount of his faith, will not admit 
Holy Orders as necessary ; even in time of general English cholera, 
our Dr. Whateley, in Dublin, the pre-anti-Catholic Archl)ishop of 
Ireland, exempts unmarried clergymen from their attendance in 
blue Asiatic cholera. In their Lordships' theological opinions, the 
attendance of clergy is ouly necessary in fine weather, when new 
kid gloves can be worn, when the tainted air does not blow from 
the East, when the patient can receive these apostles on Turkey 
carpets, and when there is no fear of the stench of the dying Chris- 
tian coming " between the wind and their holy nobility." And more 
strange than all, is the new change of the Bishop of Exeter, appi-ov- 
ing the practice of " heai'ing confessions." What an edifjdng Church 
you have ! What a veuei'ated Senate ! 

You abuse, malign, and insult us, for the practice j^our good 
Exeter now claims is the sure road to heaven. And this is what 
you call the " enviable wisdom of the Euglish Parliament, and the 
evangelical unity of the Reformation." And these are the laws 
which you call on us to respect and obey ; this is the religion to 
which you hope to convei't the Irish people ; and this is the creed 
you offer to poor old Erin, in the fourteen-hundredth year of her 
Christian age. The venerable old lady, I assure you, is not accus- 
tomed to see her apostles dressed in diamond rings and London 
boots. After her long tuition luider Saint Patrick, she is quite 
surprised to receive religious instruction from your Voltaires and 
Paines ; she cannot understand why the education of faith in Christ 
must be preceded by the knowledge of potash and pyrites ; and she 



96 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

is utterly astounded to bear men assert that the temple of the science 
of the saints must be approached through fields of Swedish turnips 
and nicely-drilled mangel-wurzel. After her long intercourse with 
Columkill and Saint Bridget, she has learned so completely the Irish 
accent, that she can with difSculty comprehend your Lordship's 
Saxon tongue ; and although she has often heard of the dialects of 
Greek, and the vocalic varieties of the Eastern languages, she has 
never understood, till she read your eighteen confessions of faith, 
bow there could be such a thing possible as varieties and dialects in 
the unchangeable professions of God's Gospel. 

If you give me fair play, my Lord ; if you do not set your "Times," 
and your "Globe," and your "Standard," and your "Punch," to 
ridicule and to abuse me ; if you call on them to reply to me by 
argument, and not by abuse, I undertake to rid this nation of your 
Church Establishment, and thus to save for the Empire the eight 
and a half millions annually, which it devours from the just revenues 
of the naked widow and the starving orphan. Depend upon it, my 
Lord, that I shall lay bare the apjialling foundation of your Church, 
before I shall have concluded my next three letters on that subject. 
And believe me, I shall conviiice j'ou that it is far wiser to make 
Catholic Ireland your friend than to make all Europe your enemy ; 
it is cheaper to secure the arms and hearts of one million of Catholic 
Irishmen by the words of truth, honor, and justice, than to pay half 
a million a year to an inefficient militia, by a useless, a pernicious, an 
angry taxation. Rely upon it that your diplomacy will be more 
respected and feared by foi'eign nations at seeing peace than divisions 
in your own country ; and take the advice of an humble individual, 
when I presume to tell you to commence the next Parliament (where 
you will keep office precisely till the Christmas recess) , by retracing 
your steps towards Ireland, and legislating for your country, not in 
the burning records of persecution and insult, but in the imperishable 
laws of eternal truth and public justice. And never forget the 
remarkable words of the illustrious Louis Napoleon III. : " AVoe be 
to him (that is to you) who gives the first signal of collision, the 
consequences of which will be incalculable." 

I have the honor to be, my Lord Earl, 3'our Lordship's obedient 
servant, 

D. AV. Cahill, D. D. 



SERMONS AND LECTURES. 



/ 



Rev, Michael Bernard Buckley. 



[97] 




REV. MICHAEL B. BUCKLEY 



Sermon. 

Panegteio of Saint Finbar, Patron Saint of the Diocese of 
Cork.* 



[Rev. Micliael Bernard Buckley, the eloquent preacher, and graduate of Maynooth 
College, Dublin, from whose numerous lectures in the United States, in 1870, and 
elscwliere, we take the following, was born in Cork, March 9th, 1831, and died in 
the same city, May 17lh, 1872.] 



" The wise man shall seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be occupied 
in the prophets ... he will give his heart to resort early to the Lord that made 
him, and he will pray in the sight of the Most High. Ue will pour f(>rtli the words 
of his wisdom as showers, and in his prayer he will confess to the Lord. ... lie 
shall shew forth the discipline he hath learned, and shall glory in the law of the 
covenant of the Lord. Many shall praise his wisdom and it shall never be forgotten. 
The memory of him shall not depart away, and his name shall be in request from 
generation to generation. Nations shall declare his wisdom, and the Churcli shall 
show forth his praise." — Ecclesiasticus, xxxix. 1, and following verses. 

|p|.EARLY BELOVED BRETHREN, — We are as.semljlcd here 
^^ to-night to celebrate the memory of a great and glorious 
'^ Saint of the Church of God, of whose character and history 
i those words of divine wisdom appear to me to afford a most 

perfect and apposite delineation. Throughout the entire course of 
the narrative which I shall deliver to you of hi.s life, you cannot but 
perceive the faithful aptitude of the description ; you cannot fail to 
observe how diligently he sought out the wisdom of the ancients, 
and how he was occupied in the prophets — how he gave his heart 
to resort early to the Lord that made him, and how he prayed in the 
sight of the Most High — how he poured forth the words of his 
wisdom in showers — how he showed forth the discipline he had 

* Preached in the f^hurch of St. Finbar, Cork, September 27, 18C.3. 

(99) 



100 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

learned, and gloried in the law of tli^ covenant of the Lord. And 
you will also see with what prophetic trnth the posthumous fame of 
the Saint has been described by the Wise Man when he says, " Many 
shall praise his wisdom, and it shall never be forgotten — the memory 
of him shall not depart away, and his name shall be in request from 
generation to generation. Nations shall declare his wisdom, and 
the Church shall shew forth his praise." I come not to describe to 
you to-night the life and actions of any great hero of this world. I 
do not seek to awaken your admiration by describing the exploits of 
some famous general, or the diplomatic tactics of some celebrated 
statesman. Mine is no story of blood-red battlefields and glorious 
victories ; my hero shone neither on the field nor in the cabinet ; he 
was not the inventor of a new philosophy, but the obsequious disciple 
of an old one. We have not heard that he was eloquent, nor does 
it appear that he was distinguished as a writer ; he was not noble nor 
was he wealthy ; his birth was probably obscure, and his life was 
certainly secluded, and yet, strange as it may appear after the lapse 
of twelve hundred years, his memory is green in the souls of his 
posterity, as the grass that still blooms on the "lone little island" 
which in early life his sainted footsteps trod. "The just man," says 
the Sacred Scripture, "shall be in eternal remembrance," and so it 
was with St. Finbar. His was the heroism of justice, of virtue, of 
wisdom; his battles were those which he fought against the world, 
the flesh, and the devil ; his victories were those which he gained 
over that triple alliance of his enemies ; his philosophy was that of 
Jesus the Son of God ; his eloquence was the simple but moving 
eloquence of the Gospel, by which he exhorted to virtue and deterred 
from vice ; his only writing was that by which he unconsciously 
inscribed his name on the memories of men ; Christianity was his 
most excellent patent of nobility ; and his only wealth and inheritance 
were the grace of the Almighty during life, and after death that 
glory which he now enjoys, and which was entailed on him from his 
Eternal Father, who has said, "They who instruct others unto justice 
shall sliine like stars for all eternity." We all desire to know some- 
thing of the great men of olden times, and we are justified in praising 
them by the example of the Sacred Scriptures ; but, to us citizens of 
Cork, and much more to us members of this Parish, it must be 
particularly interesting to know something of the life of the great 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. JQl 

Saint to whose zeal for religicjn is justly attributed not only the 
blessing of the Christian faith, whose holy light still warmly burns 
in the breasts of the people, but also the origin and source of the 
very city in which we dwell, and in which we from year to year 
commemorate the virtues and glories of him who founded it by his 
industry, and sanctified it by his teaching and example. 

I will be candid enough to inform you that the materials from 
which we gather the history of our Patron Saint are meagre and 
scanty in the extreme. After twelve long centuries this is not un- 
natural. Our Saint lived in the very infancy of a society to which 
he himself gave birth, and an}' records that might have been pre- 
served could scarcely have escaped, in subsequent centuries, the 
ravaging hand of the destroyer — the very language in which his life 
may have been written by some contemporary historian is well-nigh 
forgotten, and as we can only trust for information to the vague 
traditions of those who have gone before us, it is not too much to 
say that we know but very little indeed of the life and actions of St. 
Finbar. And even though every facility were afforded for perpet- 
uating the memory of the Saint, such was the secrecy in which he 
lived, and such the monotonous course of his monastic life, that only 
few striking events could have elicited the eulogy of the biographer, 
or enlist the interest of the reader. And in point of fact this steady 
perseverance in the practice of monastic virtue in an exalted degree 
was exactly what constituted Finbar a perfect hero. Si^eak not to 
me of your heroes who conquer the world and cannot subdue their 
own pettiest passions ; who, gifted by God with souls which might 
grasp the higljest pinnacles of heaven, are content to gain an ascen- 
dancy in this little world, and curtail their hopes of immortality to 
the expectation of living, forsooth, in the memories of men. But 
hold up to eternal admiration the man who, steeled against the en- 
chantments of a cheating world, plunges into the depths of solitude 
and there gives glory to his great Creat(jr, who with the passions of 
the flesh holds a hard struggle, an unceasing wai-fare, and wins in 
the end the victor's crown of eternal glory — who enters the arena 
with Satan, the arch-enemy of man, and vanquishes him who deemed 
himself not an unequal match to war against the very God who made 
hfm. Praise the man who, like his great Master aud model is " meek 
and humble of heart," and yet silently does more good for his fellow- 



102 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

creatures, and is remembered longer and more affectionately than the 
proudest and most exalted monarchs, statesmen, philosophers, or 
philanthropists that have ever been held up l^y worldings for the 
love and veneration of mankind. Such was St. Finbar. 

The period at which our Saint was born is the subject of one of 
the brightest pages in all the history of Ireland. Through whole 
wastes of misery — of degi'adation from within, and persecution from 
without — it is the only bright spot on which memory loves to dwell 
— the period when our native land so justly earned and won the 
proud appellation of "Island of Saints and Sages." It was the 
period when, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the arts and 
sciences and civilization itself were well-nigh trampled out and ex- 
tinguished from the face of Europe. The barbarous tribes of the 
North and the savage marauders of the East, had passed, in furious 
array, from countiy to country, effacing every vestige of refinement, 
demolishing the edifices of learning and religion — a terror to the in- 
habitants, whose only care was to learn the arts of war, by which 
they might repel the invader, and rescue even the necessaries of life 
from the grasp of the despoiler. Amidst the general wreck of 
civilization and refinement, the Monastic institute alone, like the ark 
amidst the waters of the deluge, became the depository of learning ; 
but when even that sacred vehicle was threatened with destruction 
by the waves of persecution, as the dove sallied forth , from the 
window of the ark, so knowledge, quitting its precarious abode, 
spread its wings over the waters, and, amidst the vast and billowy 
waste, could find no spot on which to rest its weary limbs but Erin, 
the emerald Isle of the West. And fondly was the sacred visitant 
welcomed to the hospitable embraces of the Celtic race ; and many a 
sacred shrine and many a holy fane was erected by the energy and 
zeal of that glorious people, to cherish the heavenly essence and 
render it "racy of the soil." St. Patrick had been gathered to the 
dust a century and more — religion flourished in the land — suddenly 
monasteries everywhere sprang, as by the hand of the enchanter, 
from the earth — to every monastery a school was attached ; these 
schools, in many instances, swelled to the dimensions of Colleges, 
and many attained the magnificent proportions and characteristics 
of Universities — the monastic schools of Kildare, Glendalough, 
Tuam and Armagh, Derry and Lismore, might well compete with 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 103 

the most distinguished academies of Athens or of Rome in their hey- 
days of power, and could boast of a cultivation and refinement for 
which the j^roverbial elegance of ancient Corinth might seek, but 
would seek in vain, to supply a parallel. From all parts of Europe 
— 'tis an oft-told tale, but, as so few honors remain to us now-a- 
days, we may be pardoned for dwelling with lingering fondness on 
the glories of the past — from all parts of Europe flocked the youth- 
ful representatives of all that was left of nobility, of elegance, and 
taste, to receive from the polished Celt the refinement they sought 
for in vain at home. The Celt was not only scholarly and saintly — ■ 
hospitality was with him a noble instinct. Not only was learning 
gratuitously oflered to the Continental stranger, but the necessaries, 
and probably the luxuries of life, were freely placed at his disposal. 
Gaul and Frank, Angle and Saxon, mingled together on one com- 
mon ground. They sought from their distant homes that happy isle 
where piety and learning grew like twin sisters, lovingly together; 
where peace and plenty smiled beneficently around ; where the soil 
was ever fruitful, and the air for ever genial; where the footstep of 
persecution had not yet left its bloody track ; where smiling faces 
told of happy hearts, and every boyish dream of the lovely Innisfail 
found a bright and glorious realization. 

Ecmarkable above the rest of those great seminaries of learning 
was the Monastery of Banchoir, now Bangor, whose ruins, on the 
banks of Belfast Lough, still attest its ancient amplitude and splen- 
dor. The great St. Bernard, writing of this celebrated school, 
says that "In the sixth century, under Saint Congal, the Monastery 
of Banchoir was a most noble one, containing many thousands of 
monks, and itself the chief of many monasteries. So fruitful was it 
of holy men, and multiplying so greatly to the Lord, that Luanes 
alone, a subject of the house, founded no less than one hundred 
monasteries. This I mention," says he, " that the reader may form 
some notion of the number of religious that existed in those days in 
Ireland." Amongst the students of this great university, towards 
the close of the sixth century, under the presidency of St. Congal, 
was a fair-haired, and probably a fair-faced, youth from Connaught, 
named Lochan, whose zeal for learning was only second to that 
which he evinced in the sacred cause of religion. From the com- 
plexion of his hair, he was named by his fellow-students Finbarra, 



104 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCF 

which literally means "fair-haired," and in which you will easily re- 
cognize the Anglicised form of Finbar. He was sprung of a Celtic 
sept, and was born on the shore of the Atlantic, not far from the 
site at present occupied by the town of Galway. What position in 
life his parents held, history does not inform us, nor is it a matter 
of any importance to know. In the great academy of the North he 
soon attracted, by his piety and genius, the marked attention of the 
sainted Congal. 

At this period of our history the ecclesiastics of Ireland mani- 
fested as chivalric a spirit in the fulfilment of their ministry as 
they do even at the present day. Not content to cherish the light 
of faith at home, it was their glory to leave their native land, 
and preach the religion of Christ to " nations who sat in darkness 
and in the shadow of death." AYhile some on their own soil im- 
parted the blessings of education and refinement to the stranger, 
others went abroad over the face of Europe, and to the Pagan 
and Barbarian communicated the inestimable advantages of civili- 
zation and religion. Columba sought the shores of England and 
Scotland — Coluuibanus traversed France and Italy and Germany 
— Gall betook himself to Switzerland — Fiacrius to Meaux — the 
learned Virgilius preached at Saltzburgh — Frigidian evangelized 
Lucca — and Fridolin sanctified Lorraine — Finbar was fired with 
the chivalric enthusiasm of the age, and longed to emulate the 
labors and partake of the glories of his brethren. But the holy 
Congal, restraining the impetuosity of the youth, instead of send- 
ing him to foreign lands, sought out a spot in his own, where 
the gifted Lochan might announce the Gospel of the Lord, and 
preach the glories of the Cross. The South of Ireland — the County 
of Cork — was the scene selected for the Apostolic labors of the 
Saint, and thither accordingly he bent his way, accompanied by 
some fellow-laborers from the academic halls and monastic cells 
of the far-famed Banchoir. He had previously received the order 
of priesthood, and was evidently determined to consecrate himself, 
without reserve, to the service of his Maker. 

It is evident to any one who contemplates with a curious eye 
the ruins of religious edifices strewn throughout the country at the 
present day, that the saints of old had a peculiarly elegant taste 
in the selection of sites, distinguished for natural beauty, on 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 105 

ivhich to erect their monasteries and churches. In this respect 
our Patron Saint was singularly felicitous. He sought and dis- 
covered, by whose assistance I know not, as a site for his first 
monastery, one of the wildest, most secluded, and most enchant- 
ing spots in all the south of Ireland — a spot which has been for 
centuries the admiration of the tourist, the love of the painter, the 
delight of the antiquarian — which derives its name from him, and 
where still, after the lapse of twelve centuries, survive the ruins of 
those narrow cells wherein he and his fellow-monks passed their 
solitary lives, and poured forth in blessed unison to the Most High 
their sighs of repentance and their hymns of praise — I allude to the 
far-famed Gougane Barra. There, in the midst of an amphitheatre 
of precipitous mountains, down whose rocky and naked sides rush 
a thousand streamlets, is found a large and, betimes, a placid lake, 
in the midst of which is a green island, blooming all the more beau- 
tifully by contrast with the barren scenery around. Far away, as it 
must have been, from the busy haunts of men, it was the beau-ideal 
of a monastic solitude ; and, to the hermitical eye of St. Finbar, its 
adaptability to his views was evident at a glance. A little monas- 
tery was built on the island, and here he and his monks dwelt — we 
know not how long. But, oh ! what a glorious spectacle was that 
Island monastery in the midst of that mountain solitude ! From the 
rising to the setting of the sun the incense of prayer ascended from 
that lonely isle, and was wafted by angels over the mountains to the 
throne of the Most High. The echoes of the hills were never re- 
sponsive save to the thrilling chorus or the swelling psalm. On a 
lofty altar, in the open air, many a time did the holy Finbar offer to 
the Lord the adorable sacrifice of the Body and Blood of his Divine 
Son, propitiating the wrath of heaven, and bringing down benedic- 
tions which fructify amongst us to the present day. Sequestered 
from all the world , those holy men conversed with God alone ! They 
continually praised the Lord and his Avorks ; they gazed on the tall 
mountains on whose misty tops the royal eagle found congenial ej'rie, 
and praised the omnipotence of Him who had robed them in such 
majestic grandeur ! The placid lake, glistening in the summer sun- 
shine, reminded them of the heavenly Jerusalem whose streets are 
paved with the purest gold ; and when the storm-winds rose, and the 
tempest shrieked, and when the face of heaven grew black, and the 



106 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE 

thousand torrents rushed from the mountain-tops, in furious array, 
jumping from crag to crag, and then foaming and seething in the 
lake below ; when the forked lightnings flittered from hill to hill 
with sublime but awful glare, and the booming thunders bellowed 
forth from mountain to mountain in echoes interminable, the lonely 
monks, though leading spotless lives, yet trembling for their sins, 
bethought themselves of the day of doom, and fancied they heard 
above the storm-clouds the trump of the archangel, and the denounc- 
ing voice of Him who " maketh the clouds his chariot and walketh 
upon the wings of the winds." 

Great schemes are matured in solitude ; so it was with Christianity. 
Our Divine Eedecmer spent thirty years iu the solitude of Nazareth 
before he came forth to preach the wonders of the Gospel — so was 
it also with St. Finbar. In the almost impervious recesses of Gou- 
gane Barra, he conceived the idea of erecting in some other part of 
the county a monastery, a church, and a school, by whose triple 
influence religion and learning might be more widely extended, and 
a greater measure of glory be awarded to his Creator. Leaving his 
Island monastery to the care of some of his fellow-monks, he trav- 
elled, accompanied by others, along the winding banks of the Lee, 
and never ceased until he reached the shore of a large lake, formed 
by the river, about fifteen miles from where it joins the ocean. This 
lake, my brethren, was called Lough Eire, and spread its waters 
over the very spot now occupied b}* the city of Cork. On the south- 
ern bank of the lake, cm an elevated ground, he found an agreeable 
site and a luxuriant soil, and there, so to speak, the pilgrim pitched 
his tent. Having obtained, as some authors assure us, a grant of 
land from a^local chieftain named Edo, he proceeded to build, and 
soon a large monastery rose, overhanging the Lee, not far from the 
site of the Queen's College. The grounds attached to tlie monasteiy 
extended from the Lee on the north to the "Lough" on the south, 
and to a considerable length from east to west. To the monastery a 
large school or college was attached, and, for the use of the monks 
and scholars, a church was also raised where the Protestant Cathedral 
now stands. All things went on well. Eeligion and learning ad- 
vanced hand in hand. One thing, however, was wanting to crown" 
the work with complete success, and this was the benediction of the 
Holy See. Accordingly, the good Saint took up his staff once more. 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY 107 

and bi'aving the perils of the sea iind land, and what was more for- 
midable than either, the fierce passions of men, proceeded on his 
long and difficult pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Apostles. He was 
accompanied by St. Maidoc of Ferns, and St. David, Bishop of 
Menevia in Wales, whose friendship he had probably acquired within 
the hallowed walls of the College of Banchoir. The Pontifl" at this 
time was Gregory the Great. Before that Pontiff had reached the 
purple he had a pupil named b}' classic writers Macrobius. This 
Macrobius was tutor to Finliar, iu the monastery of Bangor ; and 
if ever the holy man reached Rome again in the lifetime of Gregory, 
he must have fully imbued the Pontiff with exalted notions of the 
sanctity and learning of the fair-haired Lochan. However this may 
be, Gregory the Great received Fiubar with all the respect a Saint 
deserves, and which a sainted successor of Christ knows so well to 
display. By that holy Pope Finbar was created first Bishop of Cork. 
He returned to his beloved monastery full of grace and power, and 
became the first of a long line of bishops, which lasts in unbroken 
succession till the present day. The blessing imparted by the suc- 
cessor of Peter to the nascent diocese invigorated the workmen with 
renewed zeal, and enriched (heir labors with a golden harvest. The 
school founded by Finbar soon acquired the proportions of a Uni- 
versity, and its fame became so great, that it not only pervaded 
Ireland, but found an echo on every shore in Europe, and scholars, 
native and foreign, repaired in such numbers to its halls, that they 
were soon counted by hundreds, whilst its monks so exerted them- 
selves in manual labor, and gave by their iustruction and example 
such an impetus to industry, that, in the words of Colgan, " a deso- 
late waste was soon changed into a large city." Such was its fame, 
and such the splendor of this great school, that it sent forth profes- 
sors to many parts of Europe, from whom even the Eoman alumnus 
was glad to learn the very language and literature of his forefathers. 
Colgan makes mention of thirty-one of Finbar's disciples who founded 
monasteries in other places, which they placed under the protection 
of the parent house. St. Garvan, from whom Dungarvan is called, 
was a pupil of St. Finbar, as was also his successor St. Nessan, 
second Bishop of Cork — a man of great piety and learning — of 
whom Pope Innocent IH., in a letter dated 1199, makes honorable 
mention. 



108 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

After St. Finbar had spent seventeen years in the discharge of his 
episcopal functions, he died at Cloyne on the 25th day of September, 
about the year (530. St. Colman was then first Bishop of Cloyne, and 
our Saint was probably on a visit with him when he died. His re- 
mains were conveyed to Cork ; and such was the veneration in which 
his person and his memory wel'c held, that his body was enshrined 
in a silver case and preserved for more than 200 years in the Cathe- 
dral Church. 

Such is the sum and substance of all that we learn of St. Finbar 
from the resources of history and tradition, and doul)tless, it is 
sufficient to excite in us the liveliest sensations of gratitude and 
admiration. We cannot but feel grateful to him for the sanctity and 
zeal bj' which he established amongst us the holy religioji of Jesus 
Christ, to which we all belong, and without Avhich there is no salva- 
tion. We should also feel grateful to God, who, in consideration of 
the merits of our holy patron, has showered his blessings in such 
rich abundance on us all, giving us the grace after such a long lapse 
of time, and after so many and such terrible ordeals, to preserve in 
glorious entirety and with unilinching devotion the faith established 
in our midst by the fair-haired pilgrim of the West. Nor should 
our admiration be less ardent than our gratitude. In contemplating 
the greatness of Finbar, we have no aristocratic birth, no distinguished 
lineage to admire. As I have said, he was no great general or con- 
queror, like CiBsar or Alexander — he has not earned immortality by 
trampling out or erecting a new dynastj', like Napoleon, but oh ! to 
those heroes whose deeds emblazon the pages of history — the 
victims of passion — the slaves of ambition, who will compare the 
humble cenobite, who sacrificed in the cause of God every impulse 
of nature, every endearing tie of home and kindred, every ambition 
of the heart, eveiy dictate of self-love — who, in the lone cloister of 
that sequestered hermitage of Gougane Barra, where wilderness in 
awful majesty sat enthroned, thoughtless of his own glory, sought 
only the glory of Him l)y whose Almighty hand those solitaiy works 
of wonder were created ? Who shall compare to the so-called great 
men of this world, whose pathway was strewn with blood and in 
whose wake followed wretchedness and ruin, the humble but great 
recluse, the monuments of whose piety, wisdom, and genius survive 
the wreck of centuries, and the blessings of whose sanctified zeal 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 109 

are still visible in a city where commercial success entails temporal 
prosperity, and the preservation of the faith ensures the well- 
grounded expectation of eternal glory? The humility of Finhar was 
the secret of his immortality, temporal and eternal — "he took up 
his cross and followed Christ." Many have sought fame, and have 
not found it. Finhar fled from the Imbbling tongues of men ; he held 
converse only with the lofty mountains and the lonely lakes, which 
though mute spoke trumpet-tongued to him of the glories of his 
Maker ; he buried himself in the depths of solitude, but he little 
knew that he was only thus making himself a shining light in the 
Church of God. He little dreamed, when he read the words of 
wisdom how applicable they were to him — "Many shall praise his 
wisdom, and it shall never be forgotten — the memory of him who 
shall not depart away, and his name shall be in request from genera- 
tion to generation. Nations shall declare his wisdom, and the Church 
shall show forth his praise." 

The institutions founded by Finbar no longer exist, it is true ; they 
have yielded to the slow but inevitable destructiveness of Time ; and 
well was Time aided in his destroying prowess by the wicked pas- 
sions of mankind. The old Abbey met its first affliction in the first 
visit of the Danes to Cork in 820 ; for, according to the Four 
Masters, in that year those Northern marauders invaded Cork, 
plundered the Abbey, massacred the people, and burned the city to 
the ground. The bloodthirsty ferocities of those barbarian sea- 
rovers exceed the powers of language to describe. Virtue with them 
was vice, and vice was worshipped as a deity. Homicide was noble 
— piety was weakness — murder, rapine and ruin were their glory 
and delight. They marched "escorted by fire and sword." The 
local chieftains received them hospitably, striving to propitiate foes 
whom they could not subdue ; but the wine-cup was only quaffed 
when it was filled with the blood of their murdered host, and in 
drunken glee they devoted to the flames the roof beneath which they 
reposed in safety from the labors of spoliation. The blood of 
priests and the gold of churches were the especial objects of their 
two-fold greed ; they lodged their horses in the chapels of palaces, 
and when they had wasted a Christian country they were wont to 
cry out in vaunting chorus : " We have sung the mass of the lances, 
it began at the rising of the sun." In one of those invasions they 



IIQ TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

stole away the sacred shrine in which were encased the holy relics of 
St. Finbar. They often came again, and never came but to plunder 
and destroy. Soon the old Al)bey began to lose its monastic char- 
acter, and to present the appearance of a fortress, rather than the 
peaceful dwelling of a religious brotherhood. The spirit of religioa 
also declined. 

The year 1140 was a very troublous year in Cork. A bishop 
having died, a great division arose amongst the clergy and people 
as to the choice of a successor. St. Malachy, the celebrated Bishop of 
1 Armagh, and great fi-ieud of St. Bernard, was at this time apostolic 
I delegate for all Ireland, having been appointed by Pope Innocent 
11., and was on a visit with his friend the Bishop of Lismore. It 
was reported to him that great discord pi-evailed in Cork, He 
determined, in his sacred character of legate, to bring matters, if 
possible, to an amicable settlement. Accordingly, having proceeded 
to Cork, he set aside both candidates for the mitre, and elevated to 
that dignity an humble Connaught monk — "a poor man, and a 
stranger," who had nothing to recommend him but extraordinary 
piety, modesty and leiu'iiing. This was Bishop Gilla Aedha 
O'Muo-in. He is styled the " second founder " of the Abbey of 
Cork. He rebuilt and extended it ; and to this day its site is, as 
you are aware, called after him, " Gill Abbey." Ho introduced the 
order of St. Augustine in Cork, which still flourishes in the heart of 
your city. Some few centuries after his time, the members of .that 
order built the Abbey called " the Eed Abbey," whose ruins still 
exist iu our immediate neighborhood. Gilla Aedha died in the year 
of the Norman invasion 1172, and was, to use the words of the Four 
Masters, "full of the Grace of God, the tower of the Virginity, and 
the wisdom of his time." Some centuries after the death of this 
holy bishop there came a spoiler more ruthless even than the Dane, 
for the Dane was content to rob the churches and abbeys of their 
gold, and to destroy human life, but the blood-thirsty minions of 
Henry and Elizabeth would ravish from the souls of the people that 
faith which was more precious to them than gold, but which they 
cherished with a tenacity and devotion that have excited, and will 
forever excite, the wonder and admiration of mankind. Their 
abbeys were rifled and ransacked — their churches demolished or 
desecrated by the profane rites of the heretic — their monks and 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. m 

priests were hunted like wolves throughout the land ; but the blood 
of the martyrs was here indeed the seed of Christianity : it were as 
easy to quench the .stars of heaven as to eradicate from the Irish their 
love of learning and religion. Penal enactments strove for centuries 
to extinguish the elements of Christian teacliing — to poison the 
sources whence flowed the pure waters of the Gospel ; but the stream 
was no sooner dammed up in one point than it gushed forth from 
another: the tree was cut down, but it sprang up again from the 
roots Avith a richer and more abundant foliage, till the arm of the 
spoiler was wearied with his labor, and the exterminator discovered 
that he but propagated the germs which he thought to eliminate from 
the soil. Of the Jlonastery of Fiiibar there only remains one broken 
wall — of his church there survives but one Gothic archway : his 
University has altogether disappeared. What then ? — " Si 7nonu- 
meitta quoBvis, civcumspice" — If you wish to behold the monuments 
of his piety and faith, look around. In your " beautiful citie " what 
- are more beautiful than your churches ? Behold them in the valley 
— behold them on the hill-top. Have you not your monasteries 
filled with holy men, the dispensers of learning and the models of 
every virtue ? Behold your convents — those hallowed receptacles 
of the devout female sex — shrines of all the beauty and all the 
purity of womanhood. There was a time when, Avithin the walls of 
Gill Abbey, there dwelt no fewer than seventeen prelates and seven 
hundred monks and priests. Prelates and jiriests have passed away ; 
but have j^ou not in your city at this moment a priesthood, whose 
general character — Avhose unblemished lives — whose zeal for 
religion — whose talents and learning are, perhaps, not paralleled in 
any other city in the world? Finbar is gone — Gill Aedha is no 
more ; but to-day the Cathedral Chair of Cork is filled, and the 
crozier of Finbar is wielded by a Pontiff whose zeal for religion — 
whose large and cultivated mind — whose piety and philanthropy 
entitle him to rank amongst the most 'exalted prelates who have 
ever adorned by their virtues and talents the time-honored hierarchy 
of Ireland. 

"All things shall pass away," says Christ, "but My words shall 
not pass away." " Behold," said He to his apostles, " I am with you 
all days, even to the consummation of the world." The gates of hell 
shall not prevail against His Church. Persecution has done her 



112 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

worst against the church of Ireland, and yet she not only survives, 
but blooms and flourishes M'ith all the beauty and freshness of virgin 
youth. What a glory is it for us, my brethren, that our ancestors 
fought out the good light so well ! If they had proved recreant to 
the cause of God, how unhappy would be our lot at the present 
moment ! Born and brought up in heresy or infidelity, we should 
sit all our lives in " darkness and in the shadow of death." We 
should never know the bliss akin to heavenly that ravishes the soul, 
when by the words of God's minister the last stain of sin is blotted 
away forever ! Weary and worn out with toil, we should never feel 
the sweet refreshment of the soul conferred by the Bread of Life — 
the adorable body and blood of our Divine Redeemer. We should 
live on from day to day, grovelling upon the earth, little better than 
the beasts of the field — thoughtless of the immortal souls witliin us, 
made to the image of God, and destined for the eternal enjoyment 
of Him in the kingdom of His glory. And when the dark hour of 
death would warn us that our course was run, and that the awful 
day of eternity was about to dawn, oh ! how sad, how bitter, how 
desolate would be the sensations of our souls — Jesus would not 
come as He comes to the dying Christian, to comfort and console by 
His corporeal presence. The minister of God would not soothe our 
dying pangs or turn into joy the sighs that would spring from our 
lonely sorrow. Think of the solitary shipwi-ecked mariner, as he sits 
at night upon a lonely rock where he must linger in agony till he 
dies. Dark, desolate, despairing, he looks aboad over the black 
bosom of the boundless sea, uncheered by one single star-ray of 
heaven, and pauses in maddening suspense until the up-heaving 
surge dashes him from his standing place, and sweeps him shrieking 
into the waves forever. So should it be with us, but for the faith 
of our forefathers. Stranded and shipwrecked in our dying hour, 
we should look in gloomy horror over the dark ocean of eternity, 
without a ray of hope to cheer us in our misery, and pause, despair- 
ing, for the billows of death to dash us into the bottomless depths 
of the abyss. Thank God, it is otherwise. The blessings of men 
like Patrick and Finbar hover like sunbeams over the land, and 
though we maybe the poorest people on the earth, we are the richest 
in the possession of the priceless inheritance of Faith. It is, there- 
fore, our duty, my brethren, and it ought to be our glory and our 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 113 

pride, to cherish this inestimable boon, and to show forth in our 
lives that we are worthy disciples in the school of faith established 
here by our holy Patron. And, on this night, when the most adora- 
ble Body and Blood of our Divine Redeemer are exposed for the 
special veneration of the faithful, I think I cannot do better than ask 
you to cherish in your hearts an ardent love for that most holy 
sacrament as the best means of enlivening your faith and meriting 
the patronage and inetrcession of the holy St. Finbar. " What is 
man, O Lord : that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that 
thou shoiddst visit him ? " What have we done, O Lord ! that Thou 
shouldst descend from Thy throne of glory and visit the poorest of 
Thy servants? Thou art here in the midst of us, as Thou wert on the 
night of the Last Supper amongst the Apostles — so near that we 
may behold Thee^so condescending that we may converse with Thee 
like friends — so generous that we may ask of Thee what we please, 
4ind be sure to obtain it — so loving and tender that our bosoms 
may melt in the contemplation of Thy sweetness — and yet so 
exalted, so glorious, so powerful, that we may exhaust the language 
of praise and adoration, and still be at loss for epithets worthy of 
Thy greatness. There is the great Lord, my brethren, looking down 
on us to-night — the same who, on the last day, will appear in the 
clouds of heaven to judge us. Oh ! let us propitiate Him now in 
the da}' of His mercy, for on that day His ju.stice alone shall prevail ; 
and believe me there is no safer waj' to avert the teiTors of Jehoso- 
phat than to keep the lamp of faith forever brightly burning in your 
bosoms — not that cold faith by which we merely believe in God, but 
that faith which worketh by charity, and which is so strongly recom- 
mended by Christ and His Apostles. Grant us, therefore, O Lord, 
the grace to believe in Thee, to hope in Thee, to love Thee, that when 
that last hour of earthly existence shall have passed away, we may 
experience in our souls the happy transition of faith into vision, and 
of hope into possession, charity alone remaining. And do thou, O 
holy St. Finbar, intercede, Ave beseech thee, to God for us, that as 
it is to thy Apostolate our city is indebted for the blessings of Chris- 
tian faith, we may so shape our conduct, and direct our lives, that 
following faithfully the beacon of that faith enkindled by thee before 
us, we may reach in safety the heaven of eternal bliss, to enjoy with 
thee the blessed society of God and his angels, forever, and forever. 
Amen. 



114 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Sermon on the Profession of a Nun, 



■ Hearken, O daughter, and see : and incline thine ear and forget thy people and thy 
father's house, and the king shall greatly admire thy beauty, for he is the Lord 
thy God." — Ps. xliv. 12. 

g|;EAELY BELOVED SISTEE, — On this day, — certainly the 
most important of yom' life, — when, after the most mature 
fj deliberations, you have consecrated for the rest of your 
#^: days your whole being to the service of God, it is of advan- 
•^ tage to you that you should hear some words, under the 
auspices of religion, that may strengthen you for the accomplish- 
ment of the work you have so nobly begun. Into the retreat which 
you have chosen for your future years you will carry all the infirmity 
of your natui'e, and for you, as well as for us in the world, life Avill 
be ever a warfare. It is well, then, that you should have ever 
before your eyes a model which may show you not only the possi- 
bility of proceeding in your adopted course, but which may also 
illustrate the ease with which all its difficulties can be surmounted. 
When we undertake some new and previously unattenipted task, we 
are apt to lose courage, and sometimes to despair of success ; but 
when we try what some other wayfarer on life's journey has ventured 
and achieved, we are stimulated by his example, and go on bravely 
to the end. Thus I would propose to you, dear sister, the life and 
character of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the great standard which 
you should follow ; for she is the brightest model of innocence, self- 
sacrifice, and religious consecration ever presented by God to an 
admiring world. I do not wish you to imagine that in following this 
standard you can ever att.iin to anything like the purity and holiness 
of Mary, for none other, save her, ever was or will be " full of grace." 
But by imitating her virtues you can arrive at a height of sanctity 



^ 



REV. M B. BUCKLEY. H^ 



corresponding to the capacity of your nature and the designs of 
God ; and thus you can fulfil the end of your creation. She is 
especially the model for those of her sex who have left the world 
and devoted themselves entirely to the service of God ; for her life 
was the type on which the Church founded the religious profession. 
And there is an incident in her history that foreshadows^ with peculiar 
aptness the ceremony of this daj^, in which you have been the prin- 
cipal actress, — I allude to her presentation in the temple, one of the 
most important events in that all-glorious life, when she made of her- 
self a holocaust of love and adoration to the IMost High, and conse- 
crated to His service every energy of her body, every faculty of her 
mind, and every aspiration of her sinless soul. 

To this remarkable event, then, dear sister, I would direct your 
particular attention to-day, as in it you will find a perfect illustratioQ 
of your own position, and ft-om it you will draw much consolation,, 
hope, and encouragement for your future career. 

Although there is not on record any scriptural evidence of the 
presentation of Mary in the Temple, the fact of that presentation 
having been duly and religiously made is placed beyond dispute by 
a well-grounded tradition that has ever existed in the Church. 
Joachim and Anna, the parents of the youthful virgin, were fast 
declining into the vale of 3'ears, and naturally enjoyed the consoling 
hope that their beloved child would be to them the sweetest solace 
in the evening of their earthly pilgrimage. But Marj^ although very 
young, had far different views. She conceived the idea of conse- 
crating her virginity to God, and dwelling all her days in the holy 
temple of the Lord. We may well suppose her crying out in the 
words of the Psalmist, — "One thing I have asked of the Lord, this 
will I seek after : that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the 
days of my life, that I may see the delight of the Loi'd, and may 
visit His temple." Nor was this a mere_ childish desire on the part 
of Mary, for, although only in the first blush of childhood, little 
advanced indeed beyond the age of merest infancj', yet the powers 
of her mind far exceeded in vigor and maturity the scope allotted to 
the generality of the children of men. Altogether free fi'om the 
taint of original sin, which obscures the intellect and weakens the 
will, her soul was gifted with the glorious endowment of the reason- 
ing faculty at a very early age, and, even while the hearts of her fel- 



IIQ TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

low-children were but just budding into life, Mary's was already the 
full-blown " Mystical Rose," blooming for God, and emitting the 
sweet odor of sanctity for Him. A voice rang in her infant ears ; it 
was the voice of God, saying, "Hearken, O daughter, and see : and 
incline thine ear, and forget thy people, and thy father's house, and 
the King shall greatly desire thy beauty, for He is the Lord thy 
God." Quickly responsive to the celestial call, the beautiful child 
arose, and imparted to her beloved parents the mandate of Heaven. 
To worldly-minded parents this decree of separation might be a 
source of bitterness and regret. Not so was it with the sainted 
Joachim and Anna. Their nature indeed may have been tera[)ted to 
repine, and some few human tears may have been shed at parting, 
— for the parting came soon, very soon, just as the youthful virgin 
had arrived at the most interesting period of existence, — the happy 
days of innocent childhood, — the helpless period, too, when a 
mother's love and a father's care were still needed to guide her tot- 
tering footsteps and direct her in her first timid ilight from her 
humble home. 

Joyfully according with the will of Heaven, her parents accom- 
panied the virgin to the temple to oifer, as it were, the precious vic- 
tim before the throne of the Most High. Oh ! never since the days 
of Abel, or of Abraham, was any nobler sacrifice ofleredto the Lord, 
or one more worthy of His acceptance, than this. The sacrifice of 
the youthful virgin was a sacritlce without a shadow of i-eserve. She 
offers herself wholly and entirely and forever to her God. Before 
the temptations of the world or the flesh have time to mar her 
progress in virtue : before sin has a moment's opportunity to tarnish 
her spotless soul, she consecrates herself for her whole life to her 
Maker. If there be joy in Heaven for one sinner doing penance, 
oh ! what must have been the joy and exultation of the whole court 
of Heaven in contemplaticg, not the conversion of a sinner, but the 
dedication to the Lord of a soul brighter, purer, and more privileged 
than that of the most glorious angel that worshipped before His 
eternal throne. With what complacency must God have looked 
upon tiiat fair being as she knelt before His tabernacle in all the love- 
liness, innocence and simplicity of childhood, and with what a rich 
and abundant blessing must He have ratified His acceptance of this, 
the most pleasing gift ever offered to His service. Mary sacrifices 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. IIJ 

for God all her hopes and prospects of worldly prosperity, and by 
her vow of virginity cuts herself off from the noblest and most cher- 
ished ambition of the maidens of Judea, the ambition of becoming 
the mother of the Messiah. On the day of her presentation she 
places herself in a state of dependence and subjection to the minis- 
ters of the temple for all the days of her life, in order to consecrate 
her will and her heart to that Holy Spirit which was henceforward 
to replenish her soul forever, and was to make her a subject for the 
rarest and most ennobling operations of His grace. On that day 
Mary laid the foundations of the order of virginity and religious con- 
secration. On that day she exhibited to all the maidens of futurity 
the model of a life altogether angelical ; so that those who follow in 
her footsteps sanctify the earth, fill Heaven with souls, and become 
victims consecrated to Jesus ; the spouse of virgins, under the aus- 
pices of her, the incomparable patroness and queen of virginity. 
Oh ! what grace, what sanctit}^, what religion inflamed the heart of 
Mary at the moment of this consecration ; what a contempt of the 
world and its pleasures, what love for God ; what humility ; what 
obedience ; what purity ; what a hunger and thirst for the perfection 
to which she was called by the voice of her Creator ! But oh ! what 
joy, too, must have filled her loving heart at the moment of this 
most close and happy union with her God, the author of every joy, 
the dispenser of every consolation : her soul was to be henceforward 
refreshed and exhilarated with delicious drafts of His holy grace, and 
to overflow with delights of heavenly contemplation. Here, in the 
depth of solitude, she was destined to feel more entrancing rapture 
than all the so-called pleasures of the world could possil)ly confer, 
for "Better, O Lord," says the Psalmist, "is one day in Thy courts 
above thousands. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my 
God, than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners." 

But Mary's response to the Divine vocation was no less prompt 
than her fidelity to grace was devoted and persevering. Illumined 
by the light of Heaven, she constantly recognized in the temple the 
Lord of the temple, and lived and moved in His holy presence, 
enriched with all the purest grace of the soul in childhood, without 
any of its weaknesses ; at that early age her piety far surpassed the 
most exalted perfections ever attained by the greatest of the saints 
of God. While devoting herself in those tender years to the ser- 



113 - TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

vice of God's material temple, she gradually grew in grace and 
purity to be herself no unworthy temple for His Jlost Adorable 
Divinity. In that sanctuary God alone filled her soul, and satisfied 
every yearning of her tender heart ; her prayers forever ascended 
like a sweet odor before His eternal Throne ; all her actions had Him 
for their beginning and end ; elevated above the influence of sensi- 
ble ceremonies, she adored Him with a devotion eminently spiritual ; 
in worldly occupations and in the duties of charity, while using her 
senses from necessity, and not for pleasure, her union with God was 
never interrupted for an instant, — her soul, freed /I'om the tumults 
of passion, listened in secret to the whispering voice of her Creator, 
and imbibed the light of His holy grace, — she lived beneath the 
ever-watchful eye of God's sovereign Majesty. Her very slumber 
■was a species of sacred repose, that suspended not for a moment the 
application of her soul to heavenly contemplation, while creatures, 
so far from dissipating her thoughts, only served to awaken her 
spiritual recollections, as efi'ects remind us of the cause, and as the 
portrait recalls the familiar features of the original. Such was 
Mary from the moment of her presentation in the temple. 

And now, my dear sister, the great question for j^ou to consider 
on this day is, what lesson are you to learn from the consideration 
of this remarkable event in the life of Mary? I answer that, since 
you have, like Mary, consecrated all the futui-e days of your life to 
the special love and service of God, you should, in imitation of 
Mary, observe the terms of this consecration with the most ardent 
devotion and the most unflinching perseverance. Like her, you 
have offered yourself as a gift to God ; like her you have renounced 
the world and all its pleasures — all its honors and all its vanities, 
that "joii may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit His tem- 
ple." Like her, j'ou have knelt before the altar of God in the 
flower of your youth, and devoted to Him for ever all the energies 
of your body, and all the fiiculties of your soul ; and God and His 
holy angels have looked with complacency on the generosity of j'our 
sacrifice, and your renunciation of earth has been accepted by Him 
and recorded in the eternal archives of Heaven. 

Oh ! see what and how great is j'our obligation to love and serve 
God with all your heart and with all your soul. Yours must be no 
ordinary piety, for yon are no ordinary Christian ; you have 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 119 

renouueed the world ; take care that nothing of the world remains 
in your heart or your affections. No longer " of earth, eaiihy," you 
are now a child of God, and your thoughts and aspirations ought to 
be of "Heaven, heavenly." Every fault of yours is seen magnified 
in Heaven, as through a microscope ; but be not afraid, for, as you 
have been generous with God, He, who will be in no one's debt, 
M'ill be generous with you in return a thousandfold. He will never 
forget the magnanimous spirit in which you have this day presented 
yourself to Him ; and the unhesitating decisiveness with which you 
deprived yourself of that liberty so cherished by the daughters of 
man, in order that you may become the slave and the bondswoman 
of Christ. Your virtues, no doubt, must be of a very exalted char- 
acter ; but the amount of gi'ace allotted to you far exceeds that 
meted out to the generality of Christians, and the rewards which 
await you shall far surpass the glory that is reserved for the common 
children of the Church; for, surely, those holy virgins who emulate 
on earth the virtues of Mary cannot be far removed in Heaven from 
the glory and majesty of the Queen of Virgins. Even in this world 
all that man can attain — and much more than is attainable — you 
can acquire and enjoy within these convent walls. The children of 
men are unceasingly employed in the pursuit of pleasure; but as 
they search for it only in the world, their pursuit, alas ! is vain : 
their hopes are forever crossed, and their minds are forever mis- 
erable. Sometimes in the race they come up, as they fancy, with 
the delightful object of their pursuit, and fired with ecstasy by the 
contemplation of its chai-ms, they quicken their pace ; they approach 
nearer and nearer to the enchanting vision — they stretch out their 
hands to seize it — but oh ! it is only a vision — a bodiless phantom, 
an ignis-fatuus. It eludes their grasp, and leaves them weary and 
sad, the victims of disappointment and disgust. Not so with you ; 
you have found out the right road to happiness, and within your 
sanctuary is found a peace and serenity of soul which all the wealth 
of kingdoms could not purchase. Worldlings are wont to decry 
conventual institutions as abodes of gloom and retreats where misery 
and dejection dwell. With them the convent is a prison and the 
recluse a miserable captive ever despondingly brooding over her 
unhappy fate, and sighing for the freedom and gaiety of the glad- 
some world without. But they know not that the soul of that cap- 



120 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tive soars beyond the cloister bars, and mounts to the very throne 
of God, holding perpetual communion with Him and Ills holy 
angels. They paint the world as a bright sea on which the sun is 
ever shining, and the sparkling waves are ever dancing around the 
smooth path of the merry voyager ; but, alas ! they tell you not that 
the sun goes down, and that the storms arise, and that the sparkling 
"waves become billows ; they speak not of the bristling rocks, and 
the darksome caves, and the miserable wrecks — the struggle for 
life and the death-shriek of the drowning mariner. They tell of 
happy homes, and joyous faces — of social mirth and of merry even- 
ings ; but oh ! not a word do they speak of the houies made desolate 
by disease and death — not a word of the cheeks made pale by 
care and by hunger — not a word of the breaking hearts and the 
aching pulse — not a word of the scalding tears that flow when 
friends are parting, never again to look on each other's faces. They 
speak of wedded bliss and the joys of motherhood ; but, oh ! what 
do they say of the sad vigils which the lonely wife must keep while 
her wedded partner revels in the haunts of drunkenness and deprav- 
ity — what do they say of the mother's anxiety for the welfare of her 
children, and of the tender hearts broken by the ingratitude, by the 
errors, or by the loss of those whom they loved more dearly than 
their own lives ? Oh ! dear sister, you have done well, very well, 
to renounce this sinful, sorrowful world. The children of the world 
are the real captives, pining beneath the chains and manacles of sin 
and passion, while you exult in all the "holy liberty of the children 
of God." 

Proceed, therefore, in your course, for you have chosen the 
better part, and as sure as you are a faithful imitator of Mary, so 
surely shall you be a sharer of her glory in Heaven, through all the 
ages of eternity. 

But it was not for the selfish pleasures of this holy retreat that 
you have come hither ; it was not that you might be freed from the 
evils of the world, and that you might revel in the ecstasies of reli- 
gion ; it was not that you might escape the storms of life and anchor 
here in the security of indolence and repose. No ; for this motive 
might vitiate the sacrifice you have made, and God, who seeks the 
heart alone, would reject it. You have come hither because you 
love God ; because you feel that He has called j'ou hither ; because 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 121 

you will do more for Him here than you would do abroad. You 
have come, not to repose, but to labor; not to do your own will,, 
but the will of Him who has this day made 3'ou especially His own. 
You have heard His voice in your ear and in your heart, inviting 
you to become His child, and you have not hesitated to come. You 
have never once looked back. "Hearken, O daughter, and see, and 
forget thy people and thy father's house, and the King shall greatly 
desire thy beauty, for He is the Lord thy God." Oh ! the glory of 
our religion, that every day presents to our eyes so many miracles 
of grace, fortifying weak mortals with the strength of giants, clothing 
tender woman in a panoply of might, so that her worth is estimated 
by more than all the treasures of earth. "Who shall find a valiant 
woman? Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her." 
Proceed, then, dear sister, in your hallowed coui'se — follow the 
blessed light of heaven that illumes your pathway. Mary is look- 
ing down on 3'ou this moment from the heights of Heaven, and in 
you she is well pleased. Could you but behold the gentle eyes of 
that tenderest and sweetest of mothers, how much would the fervor 
of your devotions be intensified, and the strength of your resolu- 
tions increased ! May she be your powerful mediatrix before the 
eternal Throne ; that acting all your life with the docility and inno- 
cence of a child, you may adorn your soul with those beautifying 
graces which may make you worthy to be eternally saved liy your 
Eternal Father, the King who shall desire thy beauty, thy Lord 
and thy God. 



122 TREASURY Or ELOQUENCE. 



Sermon on the Blessed Virgin Mary, 



" Comfortress of the afflicted, pray for us." 

^^.EAELY BELOVED BRETHREN, — There is no sorrow like 
^^P that which the heart endures in secret ; of which we our.lelves 
^ alone are conscious, and which oppresses us with gloom and 
J> dejection, while the world thinks us light-hearted aud gay. 
We mix amongst our friends, and, while they see the faint smile that 
lights our cheek at the passing jest, they little dream of the misery, the 
untold agony, that wrings our bosoms, and brings us M-ell nigh to 
the confines of despair. Oh ! at such a moment how we long to find 
some sympathizing friend — some tender-hearted bosom to which we 
may freely disclose the sad story of our wrongs — the bitter catalogue 
of our atHictions. Aud when, at length, the melancholy tale is told, 
and the patient listener tm-ns to console us, how sweetly the words 
of solace fall upon our ear ; how the heart expands with love, with 
gratitude, with courage, and the tears, which, but a few moments 
before, were the silent interpreters of unutterable woe, are suddenly 
converted, by the magic touch of sympathy, into the exponents of 
equally imalterable joy. But where shall we find this sweet consoler, 
this gentle confidant, this tender heart, before which we may bare 
our own, and to which we may impart the last secret of our sorrows? 
Alas ! for the perversity of human nature, such friendship is rare, 
very rare, iu this cold, heartless world. Self-love predominates 
over every generous impulse of nature, and it has almost passed 
into a proverb, that hearts which have confided most have been 
most frequently betrayed. But there is at least one human being 
to whom we are invited to recur in all our tribulations, into whose 
sacred bosom no profane thought of self-love ever presumed to 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 123 

seek a resting-place, whose ear is ever open to hear our complaints, 
"whose heart is ever willing to redress our wrongs, whose lips are 
ever ready to defend our cause ; who, though she reigns invisible in 
heaven, regards with tenderest solicitude evciy child of Adam that 
dwells even in the obscurest corners of the earth ; and whose joy 
and delight is to infuse the lialm of sweetest consolation into bosoms 
over-burthened with sorrow. She is by excellence the comfortress 
of the afflicted, Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. 

Oh ! what a delight is it for us, in this valley of tears, to have a 
a comfortress ever at hand, so gentle, so sweet, so benign ! It matters 
not what may be the nature or the intensity of our sorrow, she has 
balm for all our wounds, and antidotes for all our afflictions. Who 
is the most afflicted of God's creatures upon earth ? Is it the mother 
from wfcom death has just snatched the only child of her bosom ? 
Is it the victim of incurable disease, chained to the bed from which 
he shall never rise, pining away from day to day, until he can pine 
no more ? Is it the captive shut in from the blessed light of heaven, 
without the cheering sight of a human face, and without a vestige of 
hope that he shall be ever released from his miserable bondage? Is 
it the poverty-stricken wretch, once the pampered child of fortune, 
but whose ambition now is only that he ma}' be filled with pauper's 
food, and whose body is to be cast into a pauper's grave ? It matters 
not — Mary is a comforter to all. The cliildless mother may reflect 
that Mary, too, was rendered childless, as mother never was before 
or since — that her Divine Jesus hung naked, for three hours, before 
her eyes, on a rough cross, until death delivered Him from agonies 
which He alone could suffer. The victims of disease may remember 
that, " Whom God loveth. He chastiseth ; " and that Mary suffered 
tribulations of mind to which no sickness or disease could be well 
compared. The captive may reflect that IMary was an exile for years 
in the land of Egypt, far away from friends and home ; and those who 
pine in poverty and humility may derive consolation from the thought 
that Mary has said of herself, in her own delightful canticle : — 
" Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid, therefore 
shall all nations call me blessed." 

The best comforters are those who have experienced sorrow : and 
■who shall number the sorrows of Mary, the Queen of Martyrs ? From 
the cradle to the grave she was the victim of sorrow and affliction. 



124 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

She is beautifully styled by the (church the " Mystical Rose ; " for, 
as the rose is the most beautiful of flowers, emitting the sweetest 
perfume, and blooming in the midst of thorns, so Mary was the most 
beautiful amongst women : "Thou art all fair, my blessed, and there 
is no stain in thee." Her virtues were an odor of sanctity before 
God : " Draw me, we will run after thee in the odor of thy oint- 
ments ; " but her soul bloomed in the midst of the thoi'ns of tribula- 
tion : "As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the 
daughters." (Cant, ii.) 

Preserved by God from every stain of sin, she was yet a victim to 
all the sufFei'ings entailed by sin upon the human race : proving to 
us that sufferings are the condition of humanity, and when borne 
with patience and resignation like hers, they are the sui'est passport 
to our heavenly country. Who can describe the agony of h«r mind 
when, the time of her delivery being come, she found there was no 
room for her in the inn of Bethlehem? No room for the Queen of 
Heaven and earth — no room for her whose pi'esence tills with joy 
the very angels of heaven. On a cold winter's night, and under 
circumstances so disti'essing, while the sinners of the earth recline 
on beds of down and soft couches, the Mother of God retires to a 
stable into which the cold wind blows, and the wintry rain-drops 
fall — her only companion a dumb beast, her only couch some damp 
straw, and there she is forced to give birth to Jesus, the mighty Lord 
of all creation ! "She brought forth her first born," says the Sacred 
Scripture, "and having wrapped him in swaddling-clothes laid him 
in a manger." Oh ! how her mother's heart must have been pained 
by this cruel necessity. Fancy it your own case, mothers, and 
then think how much more sensitive than you was the Mother of 
God, whose mind had none of the grossness engendered by sin, and 
whose soul was enriched in the highest degree with all the graces 
and attributes that adorn the soul of woman — the tenderness, the 
softness, the delicacy, the modesty, and the deep self-sacrificing love 
peculiar to motherhood. But what were those distresses to those 
which were to follow? Eight days after the birth of Jesus, she 
presents the infant in the temple, in compliance with the precept of 
the law: and there Simeon, a holy man, inspired b}' God, appears, 
and addresses the Virgin Mother. Does he congratulate her on the 
immense dignity she has obtained by giving birth to the Lord of 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 125 

Heaven? Does he foretell for her happiness and glory? No, his 
propheti(j words convey no comfort, but foretell of suffering and woe 
unspeakable. "A sword of grief," he says, "shall pierce thy soul;" 
and full soon did that sword begin to pierce the virgin heart. An 
edict is passed by Herod, that all the children of Judea under two 
years of age shall be put to death. Mary hears of the edict, and 
presses the infant Jesus more closely to her arms. She knows not 
what to do, but being, as the pi'ophet described her, "the mother of 
fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope," her love 
for her child, and her fear for His safety are not greater than her 
knowledge, and her hope that God will rescue her from the terrible 
danger ; and we are told by St. Matthew that an Angel of the Lord 
appeared in a sleep to Joseph, saying, "Arise and take the child and 
his mother, and fly into Egypt, and be there until I shall tell thee, 
for it shall come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy 
him.'' Oh ! what a long and wearisome journey for the young and 
tender virgin ; what days of toil ; what agon}^ of mind ; what deep 
solicitude for the precious burden in her arms ! No wonder the 
grief of her soul should be compared to a sword cuttiug and piercing 
her tender heart. 

But passing over the other trials of Mary, which were each in- 
tensely bitter of themselves, let us come to. that dreadful affliction, 
in comparison to which all the others were as nothing ; the agony 
she endured at the foot of the Cross while gazing on the wounds, 
and the last expiring pangs of her only Son. No sufi'erings were at 
all comparable to hers on that occasion, save those which rent the 
heart of Jesus Himself. Oh ! mothers, think what would be your 
feelings if you saw the child of j'^our bosom, innocent and good, 
dying naked on a rude, rough cross before the gaze of cold and brutal 
men, and then you may have some faint idea of this tender mother's 
grief. Here indeed was the prophecy of Simeon well fulfilled, " A 
sword of gi-ief shall pierce thy soul ; " for while the soldier's lance 
pierced only the body of Jesus, it pierced the soul of Mary ; for, as 
St. Bernard says, " After Jesus had given up the ghost, the cruel 
lance which pierced His side did not reach His soul, but thine, O 
blessed Mother ! for His soul had already fled, but from the spot 
■where His heart reposed thy heart could not be torn. A sword of 
^ief did pierce thy soul, and hence we style thee more than martyr; 



226 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

for the sufferings of thy body were as nothing in comparison to the 
sufferings of thy mind. Was it not worse than a sword for thee to 
hear from the lips of Jesus the bitter words, ' Mother, behold tliy 
son ! ' Oh ! wliat an exchange ! John is given thee for Jesus ; the 
servant for the Lord ; the disciple for the j\Iaster ; the sou of Zebedce 
for the Sou of God ; a mere man for the Deity Himself. How could 
thy soul have borne to hear those dreadful words, when the bare rec- 
ollection of them is sufficient to rend even our hearts of stone?" 
But the climax of Mary's sufferings was attained when she beheld her 
Divine Son die. Had He died like other men, of some natural 
disease, or by any ordinary infliction, fostered and cared for by Plis 
tender mother, she might have not repined so much ; but to hang 
like u malefactor from a cross, with cruel nails bored through His 
sacred hands and feet, with a crown of thorns upon His head, from 
which, as from His whole body, the blood flowed in copious streams, 
and all this before the very eyes of that mother whose love was 
purer and more intense than mortal ever felt ! Oh ! my Brethren, 
we can form; no conception of the agony that wrung that tender 
mother's heart ; and then, when His last sigh had fled, and His 
Divine spirit .had winged its way from earth, who can paint the gloom 
and desolation that brooded over the heart of Mary ? For if the love 
with which He loved her was the sweetest solace to her soul during 
life, how sad, how lonely must she have felt when she could now no 
longer hear that gentle voice ; no longer gaze on that pale brow 
where meekness loved to sit enthroned, or look into those mild eyes, 
perpetually beaming with calm, serene, celestial love for her ! 

But why dwell any longer on this mournful theme ? I have said 
enough to show you that the life of Mary was from beginning to end 
a life of humility, of poverty, of suffering — indeed how could it be 
otherwise? Because unless she had suffered, she would not be a 
faithful imitator of her Divine Son, who was, according to tlie 
prophet, by excellence the "Man of Sorrows." But why have I 
dwelt thus long on the sufferings of Mary? It is to show you 
how jieculiarly she is called by the Church, the " Comfortress of 
the Atflieted." Because as she suffered so much herself, she is 
capable of appreciating the sufferings of others ; and as she is natu- 
rally the tenderest and the most loving of God's creatures, she is 
willing to impart to all the consolation which is due from a mother 



EEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 227 

to her children. Her very name implies consolation — "And the 
name of the virgin was Mary " — for by i\Iary is meant, as you 
are all aware, the " star of the sea ; " and what greater comfort 
can we enjoy, journeying over the ocean of life, exposed to its 
storms and its billows, than to behold through the clouds of sin 
and temptations that bright star gleaming out from the broad ex- 
panse of heaven, illumining the troubled waters around us, and 
pointing out the way to the haven of everlasting salvation ? And 
here again I must summon to my aid the delightful words of 
Saint Bernard, who, jDerhaps of all God's Saints, loved Mary most, 
and whose language in her praise is so sublimely beautiful that it 
falls little short of inspiration : — " Mary," he says, " is most justly 
compared to a star, for, as the star without losing any of Its effulgence 
sends forth its rays upon the earth, so Mary, without tarnishing her 
virginity, brought forward the Saviour of the world ; she is that 
glorious star sprung from Jacob whose radiance illuminates the uni- 
verse — whose splendor radiates through the heights of heaven, and 
penetrates into the caverns of hell — shining abroad over the world, 
and imparting its warming influence to the minds of men : it fosters 
virtue and purges out vice. She is that glorious and exalted star, 
raised high above this vast and mighty ocean of human life, gleam- 
ing with merits, and brilliant with exemplars of virtue." " Oh ! if 
there be any amongst you who feels that he is tossed about by the 
billows and tempests of this miserable life, let him not turn his eyes 
from this bright star, if he hopes to avoid being buried in the bosom 
of the deep. If the winds of temptations arise, if you rush upon 
the rocks of tribulations, behold the star, call out to Mary; if you 
are buffeted by the waves of ambition, of detraction, of envy, behold 
the star, call out to Mary ; if the vessel in which your soul is em- 
barked be struck by the billows of anger, of avarice, of sensuality, 
behold the star, call out to Mary ; if thou art shaken by crime, dis- 
mantled by guilt, affrighted by the apprehension of judgment; if you 
feel yourself sinking into the depths of sadness, into the abyss of 
despair, think, oh ! think on Mary : in dangers, in difficulties, in 
doubts, think on Mary, call on Mary. Let not her name depart 
from thy mouth, nor from thy heart, and that thou mayest ex- 
perience the efficacy of her prayer, be sure thou imitate the example 
of her virtue. Mariner on the ocean of life, following her, the 'star 



128 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of the sea,' thou canst not Avander from thy pathway ; imploring her 
aid, thou shalt never despair ; thinking on her, thou must escape 
destruction ; protected by her, thou shalt know no fear ; guided by 
her, thou shalt never feel fatigue ; when she is propitious thou shalt 
arrive safely at the end of thy wearisome voyage, and then ex- 
perience in thyself how justly it has been said: 'the name of the 
virgin was Mary.' " 

As our Divine Saviour did not come to call the just, but sinners, 
to repentance — as there was no sinner exemjDt from His mercy — 
as He died alike for all — as He was equally beneficent to the devout 
Lazarus and the sinful Magdalen, so Mary affords her consolations 
not only to the just, but to sinners, of every degree of M'ickedness, 
who implore her aid and protection. God rains upon the just and 
upon the unjust; the stars of heaven shine alike upon the good and 
upon the bad — so does Mary, the star of the sea, shed the bright 
rays of her mercy and compassion upon all the human race alike ; 
she prays for the just that they may be strengthened in grace ; and 
for the sinner that he may be converted from his evil ways ; she is 
all to all ; to the wise and to the imwise she is equally generous ; 
she opens to all the treasures of her mercy, that from their plenitude 
all may receive ; that the captive may be able to rend his chains ; 
that the sick may be aroused from the lethargy of sin ; that the sad- 
dened bosom may be filled with the balm of consolation ; that the 
sinner may i-eceive pardon, the just man grace, the angels joy, and 
God Himself eternal glory. 

Such, my Brethren, are the vast, the sublime privileges and pre- 
rogatisres of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Now let us see what lessons 
may we derive from the contemplation of her character in the point 
of view which I have traced out for you ; we may learn from it two 
great lessons: — first, that we ought, like her, to regard suflTering 
and tribulation as coming from the hands of God, and bear them 
with patience and resignation to His holy will ; and secondly, that 
we ought to be ourselves comforters of the afiiictcd, dispensing 
charity and consolation to our fellow-crcMtures, for the sake of that 
God who has commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It 
was not for her own sins Mary suffered, for sin she had none ; it was 
to give us in her own person an eximiple of the excellence of suffer- 
ing, and to prove that, as she who was sinless suffered so much. 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 129 

there is no other way to he.ivcn for those who have sinned, bnt the 
way of sorrows and afflictions, in which she has walked before us. 

It is needless for me, my Brethren, on this occasion, to expatiate 
on the necessity and the excellence of suifcring and tribulations — 
that subject would require a separnte discourse, for peHiaps there is 
no subject on which the Scriptures are so diffuse, and which is so 
well established by the examples of Christ, and His Saints, as well 
as by the arguments of Christian reasoning. " The wages of sin is 
death." We are all sinners ; we must satisfy God's justice for our 
sins, either by self-imposed penance, or by punishment inflicted by 
God Himself. St. Paul tells Timothy that all who will live godly 
in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. The life of Jesus was a life 
of uuexMnipled suffering. What did He sa}^ to His Apostles when 
sending them abroad upon the world ? " They shall deliver you up 
to be afflicted, and they shall put you to death, and you shall be 
hated by all nations for My name's sake." Assisted by His grace, 
they joyfully undertook the task, and true to the words of Christ, 
they swam through their own bli)od to the ci'own of glory, which 
now adorns, and shall forever adorn, their brows in the kingdom of 
God's glory. For Christ had said, " Blessed are they who suffer 
persecution for justice sake." He had told them that their sorrow 
should he turned into jo}^ and therefore through many tribulations 
they entered into the kingdom of God. " If these things are done 
in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry? " If the just man 
is tried in the furnace of tribulation, what shall become of us poor 
sinners?. Oh ! then, my Brethren, let us accept our crosses as com- 
ing from the hands of God, and bear them as Mary bore hers, with 
patience and resignation, that Ave may be able to sing with her here- 
after, " His mercy is from generation to genei'ation, unto those who 
fear him ; he hath put down the mighty from their seat, and he hath 
exalted the humble." 

But we must also perform the offices of consolation to our fellow- 
creatures if we wish to follow the footsteps of Mary ; we must visit 
the sick, console the afflicted, and be kind to God's poor. We are 
all members of one family, and God is our Father ; we should love 
each other with fraternal love, for His sake. Have you ever been 
sick ? How jealous you felt if you wei-e not visited by j-our friends, 
and what comfort and delight you experienced when yon found that 



130 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

you were i-cmcnil)ered by those who, 3^011 funcied, had forgotten or 
disliked you. But, oh ! what a charm would j'our visit have for the 
humble, and the distressed. "Be not wanting," says the wise man, 
"in comforting them that weep, and walk with them that mourn : be 
not slow to visit the sick, for by these things thou shalt be confirmed 
in love." "It is better," says the same inspired writer, "to go into 
the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for in that we 
are put in mind of the end of all, and the living thinketh what is to 
come." "Religion, clean and undefiled," says St. James, "before 
God and the Father, is to visit the fatherless and widows in their 
tribulations." Remember the reward that Christ has promised to the 
just, and how that reward is to be earned. "Come," He shall say, 
" ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you ; 
for I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and j'ou clothed me, 
sick and in prison and yon visited me." Then the just shall answer, 
saying, "Lord, when did we see thee a stranger and take thee in, 
naked and clothed thee, or when did we see thee sick and in prison 
and visit thee ? " And answering, the Lord will say to them, " Amen, 
I sa}'^ to you, as often as you did it to one of these my least brethren, 
you did it unto me." Oh ! happy sentence ; and then He shall wipe 
away the tears from the eyes of His saints, and wee2"»ing and sorrow 
shall be no more, "because the former things were passed away." 

Oh ! let us not leave the House of God this day, before we pray 
to Mary that she may obtain for us the grace to bear our sufferings 
with patience ; and learn from her, the comfortress of the afflicted, 
to shed the sweetness of consolation on our afflicted fellow-creatures 
— that we may d(>serve hereafter to hear that delightful sentence 
passed upon us all by her Divine Son ; that the troul)les and tribu- 
lations of this life being over, we may deserve to meet in that Eternal 
Kingdom the Queen of Martyrs, no longer suffering, but radiant 
with surpassing beauty, and encircled with a halo of everlasting 
glory ; that, filled with love and gratitude for the thousands of graces 
we have received upon earth, each one of us may raise his voice 
before God's imperishable throne, and join with the adoi'able Queen 
of Angels, in that canticle of praise once uttered by her on earth, 
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in 
God, my Saviour." Amen. 



KEY. M. B. BUCKLEY. 131 



Lecture on the National Music of Ireland* 



pN Ireland, from time immemorial, music and poetry have been so 
much cultivated conjointly by the same class of men, and not, 
as in other countries, each by a diflferent order of votaries, that, 
as far as Ii'eland is concerned, the history of the one cannot 
well be dissociated from the history of the other. The bards of the 
most ancient times, and indeed the bards of times comparatively 
modern, not only reached the highest excellence in the performance 
of instrumental music, but their own genius supplied them with 
words and ideas, and facility of musical composition, requisite for 
attaining thorough perfection in the cultivation of the sister art. It 
is, therefore, impossible for him who professes to trace the history 
of Irish music not to interweave with his theme the history of Irish 
poetry also. In the performance of this task, the historian or lec- 
turer must expose himself to the ridicule of the unlearned sceptic, 
and to the incredulity of many of his own un-Irish fellow-country- 
men when he claims for the poetry and music of his native land an 
antiquity scarcely attained by those arts in any region of the universal 
world. But scepticism and unpatriotism must yield to the adaman- 
tine sternness of truth ; and it is truth to say that the history of 
Irish poetry and music can be traced back to the earliest dawnings of 
the history of mankind. ]\Iusic is as old as the world, and the world 
was yet j'oung when Ireland was colonized by wanderers from 
Oriental climes, where poetry and music appear to have been coeval 
with the very formation of society. Music is inherent in the very 
nature of man — it is the language specially adapted for express- 
ing the joyous affections of an innocent mind. As the whispering 
of foi'cst leaves, the rippling of the mountain stream, and the roar 

* Delivered before the Cork Literary and Scientific Society, December 12, 1868. 



132 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of the iingiy stonu, arc the homage-giving music of inanimate crea- 
tion, so vocal melody is the prescribed music in which nature dictates 
to man to sound the praises of his God. No tribe or nation has been 
ever known that was not susceptible of the influence of music ; and 
the more primitive the state of man, the more prevalent appears to 
have been its cultivation. Hence the idea of pastoral life is always 
associated with the idea of musical tastes. According to the fourth 
chapter of Genesis, Julml, the seventh descendant of Adam, with 
whom he was contemporary, was " the father of them that play upon 
the harp and the organs," that is, of all stringed and wind or pulsa- 
tile instruments ; and, appropriately enough, we find in the same 
passage that he was the brother of Jabel, who was " the father of 
such as dwell in tents and of herdsmen." Thus we find, at one of 
the earliest periods of human history, that the nomad life was asso- 
ciated in one family with the cultivation of the art of music — a 
circumstance which is illustrated in heathen mythology by the pipes 
of the sylvan Pan and the lyro of the pastoral Apollo. Juljal was 
also a contemporaiy of Noah, and doubtless transmitted through 
the saved of the ark the secrets of his art to his postdiluvian descend- 
ants. The branches of the human family were soon after separated 
from the parent stock, and migrating from the plain of Senaar, 
brought with them their customs and traditions to every quarter ot 
the globe on which they settled. All truthful history assures us 
that the earliest colonists of Ireland came from the East — that land 
where the genial warmth of the climate, the surpassing beauty of 
Nature, and the vivacious temperament of the people, together with 
that simplicity and impressibility characteristic of the infancy of 
society, made almost every man a poet. From that pure and gene- 
rous source the poetry and music of Ireland have flown, and, after 
the lapse of ages, to this day close aflinity may be discerned between 
the strains of several Oriental nations and the strains of our native 
land. These similarities have been discovered in Persia and India. 
Marsden, in his history of Sumatra, says that "the Sumatran tunes 
much resemble to his car those of the native Irish, having usually, 
like them, a flat third." Modern travellers, or residents in India, 
will tell you that there is a marvellous resemlilance between the 
Hindoo melodies and those of Ii-eland and Scotland. The same may 
be said of the melodies of the Siamese. From these Eastern sources 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 133 

our national melodies have been derived ; as, on the other hand, ia 
this nineteenth century, may be discovered in the music of the AVest 
Indians an infusion of Irish melod^s which can be traced to the 
period when Cromwell and his myrmidons transported thousands of 
our countrymen to those islands, where they were sold as slaves, and, 
in those far off climes, left behind them vestiges of melancholy music 
in which, like the children of Sion, they mourned their captivity and 
denounced the cruelty of their conquerors. 

The cultivation of music, indeed, appears associated with the 
history of the Irish race from the very beginning; while in other 
nations, the date of poetic invention and musical excellence forms 
an era clear, well-defined, and prominent. The earliest Anglo- 
Saxon poet, for example, of whom historians tell, was Ceedmon, a 
monk of Whitby, who died in the year of our Lord 680, while 
amongst the train of iMilesian invaders who had taken possession of 
Ireland more than 2,000 j'ears before, fragments of poems written 
by those ancient children of song have drifted down the stream of 
time, and bear in their language and sentiment the veritable ring of 
the days of old. The disjecta membra of Amergin, the son of Mile- 
sius, are as well authenticated to-day as the melodies of Moore, and 
of the two are certainly more Irish. 

There is evidence to show that the earliest representative of an 
Irish harp known to antiquarians is a fac-simile of that which was 
used by the ancient Egyptians, a circumstance of considerable 
moment in tracing the history of Irish music to the very remotest 
antiquity. In the ancient constitution of this kingdom there were 
five orders in the State, viz.: — The royal, the ai'istocratic, the 
priestly, the poetical, and the mechanical ; and when the represen- 
tatives of those five orders met at their yets, or great national assem- 
blies at Tara, so great was the honor paid the representatives of 
music and song, that they occupied the highest place next to Royal- 
ty itself, and surpassed in the splendor of their attire tlie proudest 
nobles that basked in the halo of the throne. Indeed, the very 
name of the place where those great national assemblies were held 
had its origin in the music-loving passion of the people ; for, as we 
are assured by authentic historical records, Temur, which is the 
Celtic name of Tara, means when interpreted, the "Wall of Music." 
Thirteen hundred years before the coming of Christ, to quote the 



134 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Book of Biillymote, "the people deemed each other's voices sweeter 
thau the warblings of a melodious harp ; such peace and concord 
reigned amongst them that no music could delight them more than 
the sound of each others voice. Temur (Tai'a) was so called from 
its celebrity for melody above the palaces of the world, tea signifj^- 
ing melody, or sweet music, and mur a wall." Alas ! both wall and 
music have disappeared forever, and — 

" The harp that once thro' Tara's halls, 
The soul of music shed 
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls 
As if that soul were dead." 

But, indeed, even here is a wild poetic fiction ; for not only is 
there no harp to hang on the walls, but there is no wall on which to 
bang a harp, since, according to the calmer statement of our national 
bard in his History of Ireland, even in the sixth century, "No trace 
of the original palace still remained, while the hill itself had become 
a desert overgrown with grass and weeds." (Vol. ii. p. 132.) In 
Ireland the bards of old wei'e divided into three classes or orders, 
viz.: — the Filea, the Seanachie, and the Brchon. They were, as 
their names imply, the historians, the antiquarians, and the legisla- 
tors of the country. Some enlightened and soothed kings and chiefs, 
some roused their valor, while others emblazoned in immortal verse 
their heroic achievements in the field. The Irish princes, like the 
Arabians, kept a numerous band of bards, musicians, and story- 
tellers in their train. The privileges and duties of the bardic body- 
are defined in a poem written by one of themselves, the celebrated 
Dubhthach, Archfilea or chief bard of Leogaire, King of Ireland. 
"The leainied poets and antiquaries," he says, "are free from tribute 
as long as they follow their own profession. They shall be ready to 
direct the kings and nobles according to the laws, preserve the 
records of the nation, and the genealogies of families, and instruct 
youth in the arts and sciences known in the kingdom." On the 
consecration of every new king it was usual for the royal bards to 
stand before the throne in scarlet robes, and sing the inauguration 
ode ; and this custom lasted as long as there were kings in Ireland. 
From the earliest dawn of Irish history the bardic body were a 
national institution ; they charmed the ears of their princes and 
people, they enriched the literature of their native land ; and doubt- 



KEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 135 

less had Ireland been able to preserve her nationality, her language 
and literature, like the other nations of Europe, those great and 
gifted men of old, who, even to us their fellow-countrymen, are 
either unknown or unregarded for their unpronounceable names and 
unspeakable language, would rank with the proudest sons of song 
whose names illumine the historical pages of more fortunate 
nations. 

So important an element in the government and adornment of the 
kingdom was the bardic institution, that seminaries and colleges 
were established for the education of those who aspired to the dig- 
nity of hardship. The date of the fii'st erection of these schools is 
ascribed to the reign of Ollamh Fodhla, or the learned professor. 
King of Ireland, who flourished some three centuries before the 
Christian era. In these seminaries the Druids instilled into the 
minds of the bards the rudiments of history, oratory, and laws, 
through the medium of poetry ; these instructions being conveyed 
in verses set to music, which was always esteemed the most polite 
tind of learning among them. The highest degree in these colleges 
was that of Ollamh, or Professor ; and so eminent a place did these 
men hold in the estimation of kings and people, that they were 
admitted to the highest offices in the hier:irchy of Druidism. 

Several kings of Ireland, so far from considering it a condescen- 
sion, regarded it rather as a high honor to be enrolled amongst the 
bards ; and, on the other hand, in the eleventh century we find an 
instance of the chief bard of the time being raised during an inter- 
regnum to the dignity of Regent in Ireland. In a word, there was 
no honor of which the bards were not deemed worthy. They held 
Tast landed possessions. For instance, the bai'ony of Carbcrry, a 
territoiy of immense extent in the county of Cork, was a present 
made to a bard of that name by one of the kings of Munster, in 
admiration of his excellent professional cajDabilities. In banquets 
and public festivals the highest place was assigned to them, after 
royalty itself; and when sirnames came to be invented, the distin- 
guishing article " the " was prefixed to their names, and the Mac 
Eagans of Connaught and the O'Daly's of Desmond rivalled in the 
splendor of nomenclature The O'Brien, Prince of Desmond, and The 
O'Donoghue, Chieftain of the glens. 

So sacred were their persons held that an eric, or compensation 



136 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

levied for killing a bard, was next in amount to that levied for kill- 
ing a king : and from the Annals of the Four Masters we gather 
that when Gregory O'lMaelconiy, one of the greatest Ollamhs of the 
day, was even by accident killed, 126 cows were given as an e?v'c or 
compensation for the loss sustained by his death. And justly were 
they thus esteemed, if only for their high intellectual attainments, 
at a pei'iocl when they outstripped with giant strides the civilization 
of the age in which they lived. " The bards of Ireland," says 
McPherson, " have displayed a genius worthy of any age or nation." 
But they were as much distinguished for the profession of their 
hospitality, as they were for the depth and variety of their learned 
lore. They kejit open homes where all visitors were welcome, but 
most of all, the votaries of science ; and we can well picture to our- 
selves on those occasions of high festival, "the feast of reason and 
the flow of soul " that shed an eclat round the bardic board, when 
the severity of philosophical disputation was varied by the vocal 
melody of educated minstrels and the clamorous voices of contro- 
versy were hushed by the dulcet music of the harp. 

Such was the bardic order, and sucli the high esteem in which 
music and song were held in the olden days of Ireland, while yet 
the Dnids performed their mystic rites ; while yet the annual fires 
illumining every hill-top proclaimed that Bel Avas the god of the 
Celt. 

But a new era arrived, the herald of the brightest days that ever 
shone on this fated land. Patrick, the Christian Apostle, set his 
foot upon the shores, and, in the blaze of the Gospel light, the Bel 
fires were extinguished forever. The haughty Leogaire and all his 
court were converted to the faith, conspicuous amongst whom was 
Dubhthach, already alluded to, the Archfilea or Prime Bard of 
Ireland. Nor were the poetic flights of that bardic genius impeded 
by the teachings of Christianity. On the contrary, the sublimating 
influence of a Divine religion gave new wings to the poet's fancy, 
and opened for him a new and boundless firmament of thought, 
where he might soar in a serener atmosphere, in the purest sunliudit 
of heaven. "The strains which he had sung," says the biographer 
of St. Pati'ick, "in honor of the false divinities, he changed into a 
more useful chant, and language of a purer flow, in celebration of 
the praise of the Almighty." 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 137 

The eloquence of Patrick met witli no resistance. The minds of 
a people naturally poetic freely embraced a religion which was 
poetry itself, and the bards were amongst the first Christian prose- 
lytes. This is the more remarkable, as they had from the earliest 
times monopolized the teaching pi-erogative in the State, and would, 
therefore, be supposed reluctantly to have yielded to the novel doc- 
trines of the Christian Apostle. But the wonders of grace surpass 
the imaginings of men. Amongst the numerous bards who dedica- 
ted their talents at this period to the sacred cause of religion, the 
most distinguished are Feich, the Bishop of Sletty, a see in the 
present country of Meath, whose poem, published for the first time 
by the learned Colgan, is in the hands of every Irish scholar ; Amer- 
gin, author of a celebrated work, well known and highly useful to 
Irish antiquarians, entitled the "Dinn Seanchat ; " the famous Col- 
umbkille, and others of equal note. Most of the poems of these 
celebrated men afford internal evidence that their construction is 
founded on the traditional rhythmical songs of the Pagan bards. 
" Their note and their jingle are national ; they follow a long estab- 
lished practice, well known to the bards of former times." So says 
Hardiman, in his work of Irish Minstrelsy. 

Sacred music was at this period cultivated with great success in 
Ireland. Ambrosian chant was the first used in our churches. St. 
Patrick, who was instructed in that system at Tours, introduced it 
into the Emerald Isle within fifty j^ears after its first institution at 
Milan ; while, at the hands of the Irish priesthood, the Gregorian 
chant was cultivated, not only in their native land, but in every 
country on the continent of Europe. From the "Acta Sanctorum" 
of the Bollandists we learn that, in the year 650, St. Gertrude, 
having procured books from Rome, invited over to her abbej' at 
Nivelle, two Irishmen, St. Foillanus and St. Ultanus, brothers of the 
more celebrated St. Fursey, to instruct her convent in psalmody ; 
while from sources equally authentic we discover that St. Helias or 
Hely, an Iiish monk, was the fii"st that introduced the Roman chant 
at Cologne. At home, in the old land, according to the testimony 
of Cambrensis, bishops and abbots and other holy men, were wont 
to carry harps about with them, and soothe their minds in the hour 
of trouljlc and care with the soft tones of sacred music. That harps 
of this descri[)tiun wero in couunon use among Irish ecclesiastics 



^38 TUEASL'P.Y or ELOQUENCE. 

from the vci\y introduction of Christianity into the country, is con- 
firmed by tlie written lives of the most distinguished Irish Saints, as 
well as by the fact that such harps are represented on the knees of 
ecclesiastics, on several of our ancient stone crosses of the eighth, 
ninth, and tenth centuries ; and also appear at some of our ancient 
shrines and reliquaries of later date. This was at that period of our 
history to which, after centuries of persecution and degradation, we 
point with honest pride, and remembering which, we cherish an 
inextinguishable hope that such blissful days may yet return to 
Ireland — the period when she was recognized all over the civilized 
world as the " Insula Sanctorum " — when sacred song ascended 
from the early dawn of morning to the descending shades of night, 
from the thousand monastic choirs on green hill-side, on sloping 
lawn and verdant valley ; on the ocean shore and by the margin of 
sunbright rivers ; from the sacred cloisters^ of Benchoir, that giant 
university of old, whose very name implies choral magnificence ; 
from the abbey of St. Mongrel, near Limerick, "where," saith the 
historian, "there were together five hundred monks well skilled in 
psalmody ; " fi'om the towering heights of the Lismorensian school 
on the picturesque banks of the Blackwater ; from the far-iiimed 
monastic halls of Armagh ; and let us add, from the long-demolished 
choirs of the no less distinguished abbey of St. Finn Barr. This 
was the time when the fame of Ireland travelled on the wings of 
the wind through every known region of the world, and votaries of 
learning flocked for instruction to her shores ; Avhen, with that high- 
minded generosity peculiar to genius, she bore abroad some share 
of the learning that abounded at home, and her children became the 
teachers and professors of benighted Europe. At home and abroad, 
music, sacred and profane, was cultivated and taught by Irishmen ; 
and the green island in the bosom of the Atlantic, in whose diadem 
sancity had become the brightest jewel, now claimed additional 
admiration from mankind by the less honorable, but not less distin- 
guishing, characteristic of the "Land of Song." 

Yes, Ireland the sanctuary of religion, the nursery of poetry, 
became the congenial dwelling-place of music, which, when chased 
from other lands by the hostile genius of war, sought refuge and 
found it in the bosom of Erin. In no other country Avere the sisters 
poetry and music so hospitably welcomed, in no laud Avere their 



REV. jM. B. BUCKLEY. 139 

votaries so honored, so enriched. The traveller could not wander 
far through any part of the country without encountering the bard 
and the harper ; and merry must have been those good old times, 
when the hospitable doors of prince, and chieftain, and lord lay 
invitingly open to the pilgrims of learning fi'om every shore of 
Europe, and the rude but generous banquet was enlivened by the 
stirring strains of the lyre, the tympan, and the lute. Our "Nation- 
al Bard," as he is called, of modern times, makes graceful allusion to 
those festive customs of the olden days, in one of his most popular 

songs : — 

" When the light of my song is o'er, 

Oh ! take my harp to your ancient hall ; 
Hang it up at that friendly door 

Where weary travellers love to call : 
Then, if some bard who roams forsaken 

Revives its soft notes in passing along, 
Oh ! let one thought of its master awaken 

Your warmest smile for the child of song." 

But the very splendor of bardic pomp well nigh occasioned the 
utter extinction of the bardic order ; and this occurred as follows. 
The bards, as we have seen, were the most honored men in the 
kingdom. They enjoyed in abundance wealth and lands, and the 
most splendid dignities which it was in the power of the monarch to 
bestow. Masters of a sublime and soothing art, they won the 
admiration and love of the learned, while for their knowledge of the 
mysteries of nature and of the hidden harmony of the universe they 
were almost adored by the ignorant and vulgar. With all these 
varied and splendid tributes to their genius and skill, they remained 
still human, and their humanity betrayed them into pride and self- 
conceit. "Through pride the angels fell." How can men hope to 
rise by it? The bards grew every day more haughty and arrogant. 
They aspired to honors still higher than those which had been so 
freely and so ungrudgingly lavished upon them ; they demanded 
the distinction of wearing the golden " fibula " that bound the royal 
robe on the breasts of kings for many generations ; the nobility they 
despised, the vulgar they ignored. Their numbers swelled so pro- 
digiously and the whole order became so wealthy, that the mechani- 
cal arts were neglected, and agricultural pursuits were almost 
entirely abandoned. The monarch Hugh, apprehensive for the 



140 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

stability of his throne and the welfare of the nation, convened, in 
the j'ear 580, a general council of the whole kingdom, to consider 
the best mtans for correctnig this gigantic grievance. He there 
resolved that the whole bardic order should be abolished. The 
monarch had little soul for music, or perhaps had got a satiety of it ; 
but at the intervention of St. Cohimba, who had been specially sum- 
moned from Scotland to attend the council, it was finally arranged 
that each provincial prince and each lord of a cantred should be 
allowed one registered bard or Ollamb, whom he was to endow with 
a settled hereditary fortune ; that this bard should be sworn to- 
employ his talents solely in the promotion of religion., in promoting 
the glory of the nation, in defending female virtue, in sounding the 
valor of heroes, and celebrating the munificence of his patron. The 
monarch Hugh also established seminaries for the education of bards, 
of which the prince bard of the kingdom, the monarch's own 
Ollamh, should be president ; whose duty it was, moreover, to 
appoint the Ollamhs for each provincial prince or loixl. Thus 
clipped of its wings, but yet purified of much that was earthly, the 
bardic order pursued its course until the period of the Danish 
invasion. 

The arduous and long-continued efforts of the nation to repel the 
invaders from her shores retarded the j^rogress of music, for the 
" piping-time of peace " gave way to the coarse clangor of war, and 
the soft tones of the lute were exchanged for the clash of battle-axe 
and spear. Yet the Muse had still a home in Ireland, and the 
hoary monarch, who fell in his tent beneath the Danish falchion at 
Clontarf was as celebrated for his skill in the music of the lyre as he 
was distinguished for his valiant achievements in the field. Nation- 
al records point to few favored sons of the Muse during this dark 
age of tyranny and bloodshed ; but yet a few names do stand for- 
ward "to show that still she lived." "These are not imaginary 
persons," says Hardiman, " like many called into fabulous existence 
by the zeal of some neighboring nations in asserting claims to early 
civilization and literature, but men long celebrated in the authentic 
annals of their country, whose works still extant survive the suc- 
ceeding convulsions of centuries. Those works do not possess any 
of the wild, barbarous fervor of the Scandinavian scalds, nor the 
effeminate softness of the professors of the 'gay science,' the trouba- 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 141 

dours, and lady bards of this period. The simplicitj^ of expression, 
and dignity of thought which characterize the Greelc and lloman 
writers of the purest period pervade the productions of our liards, 
and at the present day they are particularly valuable for the impor- 
tant aids they furnish towards elucidating tlie ancient state of this 
early peopled and interesting island." ("Irish jNlinstrelsy," vol. i., 
p. IG.) At this period Flanu M'Lonan, Ard-Ollamh, and Chief 
Bard of all Ireland, was distinguished by the flattering epithet of 
the " Virgil of Erin ; " and we are assured that the genius of music 
was hereditary in this laureate, inasmuch as his mother was known 
to all men as, by excellence, "the poetic." In this age, too, we 
trace the distinguished name of Cormac, King of Munster, author of 
the celebrated " Psalter of Cashel," whose versatile genius may be 
conceived from the fact that he was at the same time prelate, king, 
historian, and poet. We may also add, that he must have had a 
highly cultivated architectural taste, as the magnificent ruins of the 
edifice erected during Ids reign on the far-famed rock of Cashel 
excite to this day tJie wonder and admiration of architectural con- 
noisseurs. Chroniclers also love to dwell on the tact that, at this 
time, Alfred the Great was sent by his father for instruction to 
Ireland, and confided to the charge of a pious matron of high repu- 
tation for Christian knowledge, named Modwenna. This I mention 
because Alfred was an accomplished master of the harp, for which 
be was most probably indebted to his Hibernian tutors, from whom 
he may have also learned the cunning device Avhich history ascribes 
to him of going in the disguise of a hai'per amongst the soldiers of 
the hostile cauip, and, while charming their cars with his melody, 
learning the secrets of their situation, strength, and intentions, and 
availing himself of the knowledge thus acquired, for the purpose of 
defeating their projects of attack. During this dark ago tlie harp 
was introduced from Ireland into Wales by Gruffyth ap Conan, 
Prince of North Whales, who brought with 'him at the same time a 
large number of cunning musicians, well skilled in the music of 
their own land. Into Scotland it had been long before introduced 
by the itinerant bards of either couutiy, and had been employed, it 
is supposed, in Divine worship simultaneously by the monks of 
Bangor and lona. And here I may incidentally observe, on the 
authority of Bunting, the well-known compiler of the "Ancient 



142 TREASURY OF KLOQUEXCE. 

Music of Ireland," that, until a comparatively recent period, the 
harp was the usual accompaniment of the mass in our rural districts. 
We are assured by Dante that long before his time — and he lived 
in the thirteenth century — the harj) was brought into Italy from 
Ireland, "where," says the poet, "it had been in use for many and 
many ages." Thus, during a period of the history of Europe which 
appears to have been the saddest and gloomiest in her annals — a 
period generally designated a night of ignorance and barbarism — 
though Ireland partook of the general obscuration of the times, she 
was 3'et sleepless in the cultivation of poetry and music, as she was 
active in the repulsion of her invaders, and unwearying in the repar- 
ation of her demolished sanctuaries of learning and religion. 

A short interval of peace ensued between the expulsion of the 
Northmen, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons ; for the Fine Arts 
it was a period of revival marvellously rapid. On the arrival of 
Strongbow, the Irish bards and harpers had attained a success unpar- 
alleled in the history of the country. For proof of this fact we 
need not appeal to any prejudiced national pen; but we wall find it 
attested by the gall-ink records of the worthy priest-historian, Giral- 
dus Cambrensis. "This people, however," he says, "deserve to be 
praised for their successful cultivation of instrumental music, in which 
their skill is beyond comparison superior to that of any nation we 
have seen. For their modulation is not drawling or morose, like 
our instrumental music in Britain ; but the strains, while they are 
lively and rapid, are also sweet aud delightful. It is astonishing 
how the proportionate time of the music is preserved, notwithstand- 
icg such impetuous rapidity of the fingers, and how, without violating 
a single rule of art, in running through shakes and slurs, and vari- 
ously intertwined organizing or counterpoint, with so sweet a rapid- 
ity, so unequal an equality of time, so apparently discordant concord 
of sounds, the melody is harmonized and rendered perfect." He 
goes on to admire the simultaneous sounding of different chords, the 
attention to cadences, the soft swelling and diminution of the notes, 
and thrilling delight produced by the tingling of the slender strings 
sportively playing under the deep tones of the bass. This testi- 
mony of Cambrensis is all the moi'e valuable as he had tra\elled all 
Europe, and was able to compare the musical excellences of all civil- 
ized nations. He studied for some years iu Paris, visited Rome 



KEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 



143 



three times, and took his I'oute, at least once, through tlic Low 
Countries and Germany. He adds, moreover, that Scothmd and 
Wales endeavored to perfect themselves in the musical schools of 
Ireland, and some were begiuning to think that Scotland had already 
surpassed her instructress. 

Such was the enchanting sweetness of Irish music, that the con- 
querors^ of the country paused in their work of bloodshed and 
enslavement, to be delighted with the strains of the captive land. 
Fascinated by the unwonted spell, they frequently sacrificed their 
lives to the charms of such soft oblivion ; for the minstrels, in whom, 
the love of their native land was by far the most inspiring passion, 
for the most part employed their art iu the sweet work of revenge, 
besirening their tyrants into a fatal incautiousness, and immolating 
them to the outraged genius of national freedom. And yet, to the 
praise of victors and vanquished, be it stated that such was the music 
of the Celt, and such the appreciation of the Saxon, that an Irish 
minstrel became an indispensable appendage of baronial magnifi- 
cence, while every wandering child of song found a cordial welcome 
in the English camp, and a c.ead viille faiUhe in every Anglo-Irish 
castle. But soon, when the chains had been well-nigh riveted, it was 
found that many a link was becoming loosed by the insinuating 
charm of music and song, and that the sj'mpathy of the conquerors 
was becoming strangely awakened iu favor of the conquered. It 
may have been to some extent by those soft arts of music that the 
Saxons became iu many places "more Irish than the Irish them- 
selves." Howbeit, the severity of the law had to be called into 
operation to prevent the free mingling of the Irish harpers with the 
English settlers. Proclamation followed proclamation preventing it. 
The famous statute of Kilkenny, passed in the year 1367, made 
it penal to give any entertainment to Irish minsti'els, of whom six 
classes were specified, and forbade them to enter the English Pale, 
under the penalty of forfeiting their instruments and suflering im- 
prisonment. Those whom they failed to seduce they endeavored to 
corrupt. One of them, whose name I will not even do him the 
honor of mentioning, obtained a license to dwell within the precincts 
of the Pale, for that " he not alone was faithful to the King, but was 
also the cause of inflicting many evils on tlie Irish enemy ! " Oh ! 
for a tongue to curse the slave ! In the reign of Henry VI. (we 



144 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

must hope the gentle monarch knew nothing ahout it), the bards, 
coniiiining still to exercise their unwished for inllnenco over the col- 
onists of the Pale, the Marshal of Ireland received orders to impris- 
on the harpers, and was further empowered to conliscate to his own 
use their gold and silver, their horses and harness, as well as their 
instruments of minstrelsy. Need it be added that, in the sanguinary 
reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, those laws against the Irish 
bards, so far from being relaxed, were written in the reddest ink of 
their blood-stained statute-books, and that, as the adage tells us, an 
Irishman is ever found ready to turn the spit on which his fellow- 
countryman is about to be roasted, the Virgin Queen found amongst 
her officers in this country many ready ministers of her vengeful 
enactments? The Lord Barrymore of the day was one of those who 
courted the royal favor by accepting commissions under the great 
seal, not only to destroy the instruments of the proscribed musicians, 
but also (o hantj the harpers. But the policy of persecution was 
frustrated by the enthusiasm it only tended to evoke. " The cliarms 
of song," says Moore, " were ennobled Avith the glories of martyr- 
dom, and the acts against minstrels in the reign of Henry VIII. and 
Elizabeth were as successful, I doubt not, in making my countrymen 
musicians as the penal laws have been in keeping them Catholics." 
The bards survived and flourished, and the strains of national music, 
though blended with the sadness of a persecuted race, lost nothing 
of their enchanting sweetness. At this very period the accomplished 
Sir Philip Sidney bears honorable testimony to the fact that, "in Ire- 
land the poets were held in devout reverence," while that cruel 
hater of the Irish, the author of the "Faery Queen," forgetful of the 
sympathy that should exist between the children of genius, whilo 
complimenting the bards on " the exquisite poetry of their songs,'' 
denounces them as employing their iiielodious arts to the "gracing of 
wickedness and vice," while the same acts "with good usage, might 
serve to adorn and beautify virtue." The "wickedness and vice" of 
the l)ards, which hurt the sensitive conscience of the gentle poet, 
was tlie untiring exercise of their genius to foster and keep alive in 
the l)rcasts of the people, the remembrance of ancient glcry, and 
unforgetfulness of ancient wrong; such, for example, were the 
" wickedness and vice " of the Bard O'Gnive, wlio formed one of the 
attendant train of Shane O'Neil, Prince of Ulster, as he passed 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 145 

through the streets of London, on his way to the palace of Elizabeth. 
"The Londoners," we are told by Camden, "marvelled much" at the 
rare spectacle that passed before their eyes. Much more would they 
have marvelled had they been able to guess that the rough chieftain 
who headed the procession, O'Neil himself, the descendant of Con of 
the Hundred Battles, looked down with scorn upon the upstart 
dynasty of the Tudors, and that the attendant O'Gnive, the poet of 
the Ulster Prince, was Prime Bard of all Ireland, and that by the 
charms of his verse and the magic of his lyre, like Tyrta?us of old, 
he enkindled in the breasts of his subjugated fellow-countrymen a 
fire that urged them on to many a bloody rencontre with the enemies 
of their country. 

But the period was ftxst approaching when the spirit of bardom 
was to be extinguished in Ireland forever, for though, like religion, 
poetry and music may for a while survive the rage of persecution, 
yet, unlike her, they must ultimately perish before it. He who must 
handle the sword has little taste for the warblings of the lute ; he 
who is crushed and starving little heeds the dulcet melody of song. 
The tyi'anny of Cromwell and the wars of William decimated the 
gentry and nobility of the land, and left few jiatrons for the children 
of the Muse. The minstrel's day was fast passing away. 

" The bigots of the iron time 
Had called his harmless art a crime ; 
A wandering harper, scorned and poor, 
He begged his bread from door to door, 
And tmied, to please a peasant's ear, 
The harp that Kings had loved to hear." 

The voice of the muse was now seldom and but feebly heard through 
the land. Its melancholy tunes were breathed almost for the last 
time in the cause of the second James, to whom the country looked 
with the faint hopes of an expiring nation ; but never was the Muse 
of Ireland worse employed than in celebrating the praises of him 
who, in addition to his own craven cowardice, had the meanness to 
impute the same weakness to those who freely bled in his cause, and 
whose valor was never, before or since, impugned even by the bit- 
terest enemies of their country. 

The gardeners of song had now passed away and the garden ran 
wild, yet many a priceless flower bloomed wildly there. The 



146 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE 

hereditary guardians of tliose flowers were no more, and strangers 
came and stole them unbliishingl}' away. Many continental com- 
posers of remarkable genius partook of the elegant spoil, and 
enriched their own productions with the choicest cullings of the 
Irish Muse. Thus Irish melody, like a fair bird of passage chased 
by the harsh winds of persecution from its native soil, sought refuge 
in the more congenial climes of the south, and taught the imitative 
warblers of Germany and France to blend the banished music of the 
west with their own enchanting strains. 

In the last spasmodic throes of the Irish Muse she gave birth to 
Carolan, the last genuine Irish bard, Avho, as a musical genius, is 
allowed to rank With the foremost of modern times, and who, though 
" no storied urn or animated bust " points out his final resting-place, 
has yet, by his own deathless strains, secured for himself an immor- 
tal dwelling in the afl'ectionate memories of his fcllow-country-men. 
Nor even yet was the genius of music extinguished in Ireland, 
though the last of her veritable bards had perished. A faint echo 
of the melodious past was heard towards the close of the last cen- 
tury, when, in the year 1792, ten rival harpers met to enter into a 
musical contest on the national instrument at Belfast. These new 
Pythian games were first conceived by an enlightened and patriotic 
Irish gentleman living at Copenhagen, a certain Mr. James Dungan, 
a native of Granard, in the county of Longford. By his zealous and 
enterprising love of country, as well as by the generous aid of his 
IJurse, a previous meeting of harpers had taken place at Granard in 
the year 1781, when, in presence of a large and distinguished audi- 
ence assembled at a ball, seven harpers, of whom one was a Avoman, 
met to try by competition the respective • charms of their harps. 
Charles Fanning got the first prize, ten guineas, for his performance 
of the "Coolin," an air which has been always, and most justly, 
admired by the lovers of Irish music. The third prize was awarded 
to the Avoman, Rose Mooney, for her performance of "Planxty 
Burke." Five hundred persons were present at the ball. 

On the 2d of March, in the ensuing year, Mr. Dungan organized 
another ball, at which he was himself present, and which was far 
more numerously attended than the previous one. Only two new 
harpers could be found to swell the ranks of former competitors, and 
one of these was a woman. The premiums were adjudged as before, 



KKV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 147 

but cTT'iio "■.' some private jealousies observable in their distribution, 
Mr. Pungan was disgusted, and made no further attempt at the 
revival of our national music. More than one thousand persons 
were present at this ball. Lord and Lady Longford were among the 
number. Persons of rank for forty miles all round assembled ; and 
after the stables of the town were filled with horses, those that 
ri-mained in the streets gave the town the appearance of a great 
lorse fair. A large subscription was made up for the harpers, or 
rather for such of them as had not received pi'izes ; and so gener- 
iusly was money paid down for the purpose, that the proportions 
awarded to the unprized exceeded the shares allotted to those who 
had been rewarded. 

Ten years passed away, aiad on the 11th of July, 1792, and the 
two days succeeding, an immense assemblage of persons met at a 
hall in Belfast to witness " the last scene in this strange, eventful 
history "of Music in Ireland. Ten harpers only responded to the 
call. The prize was awarded to Hempson, whose performance must 
have been very wonderful in his best days, as on this occasion he 
had reached the enormous age of ninety-seven, and was supposed, 
for good reasons, to be much older. Hempson is the "mon wi' the 
twa heads " alluded to by Lady Morgan in her "Wild Irish Girl," 
this soubriquet being an allusion to a huge wen on his poll, which 
gave him tiie appearance of a man with two heads. He was, since 
the time of Cardan, by many degrees, the best perf<n-mer on the 
harp. Carolan had more genius : he was a composer. Hempson 
was only a player ; but, as a player, was not surpassed even by 
Carolan himself. His harp, the only one he ever used, was made 
for him in the jear 1707, and he kept it until the day of his death, 
which occurred one hundred years after. It was called the " Queen 
of Music," of which he was, doubtless, the king in his day. His 
style of playing was diflerent from that of his contemporaries, inas- 
much as he played with " long crooked nails," as ancient writers 
describe the harp players of the early Irish, while the thrilling effect 
of the small wires tinkling imder the deep tones of the bass fully 
realized the picture of the harpers drawn by Cambrensis, and filled 
with wonder and delight those who had the good fortune to hear him. 
To his enchanting strains we are indebted for the finest collection 
of ancient Irish music ever presented to the public. Mr. Edward 



148 TKEASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Bunting, to whom I have already alluded, was always, as he describes 
himself, " an enthusiast about everything Irish ; " but the harping of 
Hempson inflamed him with a still more ardent love of his native 
land, and nerved him to the collecting and publishing hundreds of 
old Irish airs, which, but for his zeal, and talent, and patriotism, 
would have been forever lost to the world. The attempt to pre- 
serve Irish airs had been made three times before Bunting essayed it. 
The first collection was published by Burke Thumoth in 1720 ; the 
second by Neil, of Christ Churchyard ; the third by Carolan's son, 
under the patronage of Dean Delany, in 1747. Ir^all these produc- 
tions the arrangement was adapted to the flute or violin, rather than 
a keyed instrument ; so that the tunes were, to a great extent, 
deprived of their peculiar character, and as they were deficient in 
arrangement, so they were meagre in extent. But Mr. Bunting's 
publication may be called the first only genuine collection of Irish 
harp music ever published, at least up to the year 1796. That the 
publication of such a work should have been postponed until the 
close of the last century may appear ascribable to the apathy of the 
Irish on the subject of their national music ; but, on a closer exami- 
nation, the cause will be found to exist elsewhere. It must be 
attributed to the mixture of races in Ireland, and the spirit of hos- 
tiUty that, up to the passing of Catholic Emancipation, was fostered 
between them. The Milesian-Irish were debarred fi'om such a pub- 
lication by the apprehension of the wrath of their rulers, which was 
visited on every manifestation of national feeling ; and the Anglo- 
Irish would not undertake it, because it would tend to excite in the 
breasts of the people that dangerous enthusiasm which is ever aroused 
in the victims of oppression by the national poetry and music of 
ancient tunes. This apparent apathy extended not only to the 
poetry and music, but also to the general literature of the country. 
The Four Masters made a bold step in the right direction ; but even 
their patriotic intentions were frustrated by the civil commotions of 
1641. In modern times, Mr. Hardiman preserved from ruin many 
of our most popular songs, and the Celtic and Ossianic Societies 
extended their labors to the publication of other works of interest, 
but were obliged to desist for want of a sufiiciently large reading or 
appreciative public. Efi'orts have been made to preserve the ancient 
melodies of Scotland with some success ; and when Owen Jones, a 



REV. M. B. BUCEXEY. 149 

Welshman of humble rank, though entitled, from his literary heroism, 
the "Cambrian Mecsenas," published, in 1774, his "Archaeology of 
Wales " — a work comprising all the discoverable historical and 
poetical remains of Cymric literature, — his work was hailed with 
the warmest greetings of his countrymen, and sustained by the con- 
tributions of a generous and enlightened public. Great praise, there- 
fore, is due to the patriotic Edward Bunting, who has preserved to 
posterity nearly three hundred Irish airs, almost all of which would 
have been irretrievably lost but for his untiring zeal in the cause of 
his«native land. At the contest of harpers at Belfast, the office was 
assigned to him of writing down the music of the various airs played, 
for it was manifest to all that, with the demise of those ten harpers, 
the treasures of Irish music should perish forever, unless rescued 
from oblivion by some timely interposition. The notes thus taken 
he afterwards perfected in private sittings with Hempson and others ; 
and obtained many more by travelling through the country and con- 
versing with those who had any information to convey. Gathei'ing 
thus the floating fragments of song, he gradually formed by an 
atomic process of his own a new creation of Ii-ish music. His antici- 
pations of the decay of Irish harpers, as a class, were sadly realized 
some years after, for, in the year 1809, only two of the Belfast ten 
survived ; and in a subsequent edition of his work, he states that, at 
that time, even those two had meanwhile passed away. 

Thus, after centuries of fading glory, another gem was snatched 
from the diadem of Erin — the very voice in which she proclaimed 
her woes, and appealed to the sympathy of nations, was hushed for- 
ever. Truly, 

" We are fallen upon gloomy days, 

Star after star decays ; 

Every bright name tliat shed 

Light o'er the land is fled." 

And yet, the name of him who penned those lines shall not be 
soon forgotten, nor the light it shed o'er the land be fled. While 
Irish Music holds a place in the history of the world, or wins the 
admiralSon of mankind, the name of Thomas Moore shall be I'emem- 
bered with gratitude and love for his splendid and successful attempts 
to revive and perpetuate the melodies of Ireland. I shall not here 
dwell on the point so often raised respecting the melodies of Moore 



250 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

in connection with the music to which they are set — how far the 
ancient music has been distorted to meet his words, or how far his 
words represent that genius of nationality tliat should beam through 
the melodies of one's native land. Nor shall I stop to investigate 
the grounds of his opinion, at onetime broadly expressed, at another 
time carefully modified, respecting the antiquity of Irish music of a 
"civilized description." Suffice it to say, that he has done a great 
work — a work that reflects glory and honor on Ireland. He has 
restored forever to the memories of mankind the joyous and the 
melancholy music of Erin's song, long past ; the hymns of peace, 
the marches of war, the poeans of triumph in which our ancestors 
celebrated the varying fortunes of their names ; he has wed immortal 
words to immortal music — he has photographed to posterity the 
smiles and tears that blend like the rainbow in the eyes of Erin. 
Riving asunder the lava-shroud in which the volcanic eruptions of 
rebellion and tyranny had enveloped her poetry and song, he has 
brought to light the wonders of a new city of the dead, where the 
Muse walked long ago with the children of men ; and as the morning 
sun awaked in Egypt the melody of Memnon's fabled lute, so tiie 
sunl)eams of his genius radiating through the long obscured caverns 
of buried music, aroused the slumbering harp of Erin, and made it 
sound as of old to the enchanted cars of men. Truly then did he 
sing of himself — 

" Dear harp of ray country, in darkness I found tlioe, 
The cokl chain of silence had hung o'er thee long, 
When proudly, my own island harp, [ uubomid thee. 
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom and song." 

But he has done still more by his immortal strains, for they uphold 
the ancient dignity of our country, and the ancient virtue and valor 
of her sons, and hold out to the desponding generation of the present 
day, by their seemingly inspired vaticinations, the consoling hope 
that the star of oppressed and persecuted Erin, so long obscured, 
may yet shine out in all its pristine splendor, when those which now 
shed a dazzling brightness in the firmanent of nations shall be defaced 
and extinguished forever ! 

While the bards of Erin flourished, and the national harp nuisic 
was cultivated, foreign music remained in Ireland disregarded or 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 151 

unknown. It was only in the last century it was introdnced into the 
country, when its own music was in the last stage of existence. 
Many Italian masters who visited England made the tour of Ireland 
before their return to the Continent, and some fixed their abode and 
found a final and congenial resting-place in the "land of song." The 
first of these was IMathew Dubourg, the friend of Handel, who fixed 
his residence in Dublin in the j'ear 1728. Castriici, the pupil of 
Corelli, died in the Irish metropolis in 1752. Geminiani, the great- 
est violinist of his age, and Giordani, a scarcely less-distinguished 
celebrity, left their bones in Ireland. The great Handel himself, 
chased from England by an unapprecialive public, appealed success- 
fully to Irish admiration. It is to his flight across the Channel on 
this occasion that Pope alludes, when he addresses the goddess of 
Dulness, as follows : — 

" Strona: iu now arms — lo ! giant Handel stands 
Like bold Briareus with his hundred bands; 
To stir, to rouse, <o shake the soul he comes, 
And .Jove's own tliunders follow Mars's drums. 
Arrest him, Empress, or you sleep no more. 
She heard, and cliasod him to th' ' Hibernian shore.'" 

Dunciad, Book IV. 

In the year 1741, his "Messiah" was first heard in Dublin, and 
the applause it received more than compensated for the disregard he 
had experienced in England. Music now became all the rage. 
Italian singers were invited over, and the fair dames of Ireland 
learned to expire at an opera. Concerts were the favorite amuse- 
ments in the hoiTses of the nol)ility and gentrj% and Musical Societies 
were formed in all the great towns of the kingdom. 

But much as the Irish admired the performances of foreign artists, 
they did not send forth into the arena of composition any of their 
own countrymen until the j^ear 1782, when the Earl of Moriiington, 
father of the Duke of Wellington, led the van in this new sphere of 
national glory; a new mythology by the Avay — the Irish Apollo 
begetting the Irish Mars ! By his own natural talents and studious 
application he acquired such knowledge of his art that Germiniani 
declared he could not add to his knowledge ; and he was one of the 
few on whom the Dublin University conferred the degree of Doctor 
of Music. He was followed by a numerous host, among whom rank 



152 TREASURY" OF ELOQUENCE. 

foremost Sir John Stevenson, Phelps, M'Donnell, Moore, Lee, Hef- 
fernau, and others who deserve to be specially noticed. Henry Mad- 
den, an Irishman of noble family, was at one time chapel-master to 
the Cathedral of Tours, and subsequently master of the choir at the 
chapel royal of Versailles, where his music was sung down to the 
time of the first I'evolution. Thomas Carter was famous at Naples, 
Bengal and in England. Rophino Lacey, born of Irish parents 
at Bilboa, was regarded as a prodigy of music in Spain, Holland, 
Frauce and England. "The young Spaniai-d," as he was called, 

I received presents from Buonaparte and from Geoi'ge the Fourth, 

j while Prince of Wales, as compliments to his rare and wonderful 
genius. Andrew Ashe, of Lisburn, won by public competition 
the dignity of "first flute" at "Brussels. But the fame of all prece- 
ding musicians was eclipsed by that of Michael Kelly, whose musical 
genius was of the very highest order. He won his laurels in every 
metropolis of Europe, from Rome to London, and from Paris to 
Vienua. He was the courted of kings, the adored of audiences, the 
favorite of the Sovereign Pontifi^, at whose hands he received the 
honor of being permitted to pei-form in St. Peter's during Holy 
Week. In times more recent, Balfe preserves the honor of Ireland 
in the field of music, while many humbler sons of genius constitute 
a galaxy of undistiuguishable but brilliant luminaries in the firma- 
nent of national music renown. And all this has taken place 
while no Englishman has been known to compose a single piece for 
any foreign audience, and Braham was the oul}^ Englishman that 
appeared on the Continent as a singer and performer with an3'thing 
like remarkable success. 

We have seen that from the earliest dawn of Irish history the 
harp was the national musical instrument of the country ; but it 
must not be, therefore, supposed that our ancestors were unac- 
'quaiuted with all other instruments of music. In very ancient times 
the tympan was in use in Ireland. From all the evidences that can 
be adduced on the subject, it would appear that the tympan was an 
instrument shaped like a South-Sea islander's guitar, covered with 
leather, supplied with strings, and played with the fingers. Did we 

' ever dream before that our ancestors were adepts at the banjo ? 

'. This instrument could not have exercised any great influence on the 
musical passions of a people amongst whom the noble harp existed. 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 153 

and by whom all its powers of music were so effectually developed. 
As the Wai-ds are the descendants of the bards, the Shanahans of 
the Seanachies, the Brehous of the Brehons, the Curtins of the croit- 
players or harpers, so the Tympanies, a family abounding in Con- 
naught, are the descendants of the Tympanits of old, while all those 
families taken together are the joint descendants of that poetical, 
antiquarian, legislative, musical, and philosophical body who formed 
an indispensable appendage of an Irish court in the "olden time." 

The bag-pipe has also been justly regarded as a national instru- 
ment of music in Ireland, from time immemorial. The pipes were 
played at the head of an army on its way to battle, and by their wild 
music stimulated the soldiery to deeds of valor and forgetfulness of 
life. Bunting supplies remarkable evidences of the antiquity of the 
bag-pipe in Ireland, and shows that it was generally used for martial 
purposes, and was sometimes also employed in funeral processions, 
moving by its plaintive tones all those who heard it to pity and tears. 
The present representative of the bag-pipe in Ireland is not the up- 
roarious instrument of the Scotch Highlanders, but the dulcet, 
though it must be admitted, the often badly-tuned and worse played 
instrument to whose music we have many a time at a country wed- 
ding seen the " light fantastic toe " whirl in the dance, and from 
whose melancholy crouing in the hands of some street performer we 
have rushed out of ear-shot in mercy to our nerves. 

That the organ Avas introduced into Ireland at a very early period 
appears to be beyond dispute, though it is also certain that the in- 
strument called by that name was altogether different in size and 
power from the gigantic organs of the jiresent day. It is mentioned 
in the annals of Ulster that in the year 814 the organs of a place 
called Cluainacrema were burned, and there is reason to think that 
these were not the first used in the country. The use of the organ 
from so early a date would seem to imply that a knowledge of coun- 
terpoint, or strictly polyphonic composition, was known in Ireland 
since its introduction, or at least came to be known soon after. But 
we must not flatter our national vanit}' by this surmise, as the best 
antiquarians suppose it has no foundation. The Irish were too im- 
pulsive a race to restrain their feelings within the obligations of har- 
monic rules. Sentiment was the pervading genius of their song, 
and impassioned sentiment knows no rules of art, or at least bends 



254 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to thom with difEciilty and reluctance. As simplicity of dress 
heightens the effect of female beauty, so the unadornmcnt of Irish 
melody is its sweetest charm ; it is lost and unadmircd in the cum- 
brous apparel of complex harmonization. 

And, indeed, to an Irishman what music sounds so sweetly as the 
simple melodies of his native land? How often at a magnificent 
concert, got up in one of our cities regardless of expense, where the 
music was perfect, the performers unequalled, the singers the most 
celebrated of their day, have we observed the apathy, or at least the 
perfectly controllable enthusiasm of the audience, as each nicnsurc of 
music and song was presented for admiration ! But when, amidst 
the profusion of foreign Avondcrs of harmony, some solitary voice, like 
that of the last feathered minstrel of day, stole forth and caroled a 
lay of our native land, have we not observed with feelings perfectly 
indescribable the sudden husiiing of every breath, the riveted gaze 
of every ej'e, the rapt attention of every car, the almo.st audible 
thi'obbing of every heart. The whole audience seemed melted al- 
most to tears, and at the expii-alion of the singer's last note have we 
not marked what a peal of applause burst wildly forth, wliat earnest, 
fervid enthusiasm burned in every breast, andwliat a vigorous inex- 
orable encore forced the singer back upon the stage, and elicited a 
repetition of the air " so bewitchingly simple," yet so marvellously 
ma<Tical in its effect ! On such an occasion enthusiasm heightens to 
frenzy when the harper appears upon the stage, and calls forth the 
thrillin"- wonders of his lyre. Then the memory of the Irishman 
wanders back to the days of old, and the spirit of Ossian overshad- 
ows him, for he feels that " Such were the words of the bards in tha 
days of song, when the king heard the music of harps, the talcs of 
other times. The chiefs gathered from all their hills, and heard the 
lovely sound. They praised the voice of Cona, the first among a 
thousand bards : but the sons of song are gone to rest. jMy voice 
remains like a blast that roars lonely on a sea-surrounded rock after 
the winds are laid ; the dark moss whistles there ; the mariner sees 
the wavino" trees." If such be the effect of an Iri.sh melody on an 
Irishman's heart at home, what must it be when in some place of dis- 
tant exile " he hears the wild songs of his dear native plains ? " For 
uo exile ever sighs more for his native land, or loves her more in- 
tensely than the " exile of Erin " does his. Distance softens down 



RKV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 155 

the less amiable traits with which bigotry and misrule have stained 
her character ; her virtues and misfortunes alone are remembered, 
and the exiled child thinks only with that love peculiar to the impul- 
sive nature of Erin's sons of the sad, weeping motherland he has left 
behhid, perhaps forever. 

The melodies of Ireland breathe much of woe — they teem with 
spells awakening the bitterest recollections ; but it must be remem- 
bered that the Muse of Erin is not always sad, but often exults with 
hope and joy, often mingling in the self-same song her mirth and 
sorrow, her lights and shades of feeling. Her melodies typify her 
chai-acter, and are the most eloquent commentaries on the vicissi- 
tudes of her history. They paint the blending of her smiles and 
tears — they tell the progress of her glory, and her gradual evan- 
escence. " The tone of defiance," says JNIoore, " succeeded by the 
languor of despondency —a l)urst of turbulence dj'ing away into soft- 
ness — the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the next ; and 
all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness which is naturally 
produced by the eflbrts of a lively temperament to shake otf or for- 
get the wrongs that lie upon it." Such are the features of our his- 
tory and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in 
our music; and there are many airs which, I think, it is difficult to 
listen to without i-ecalling some period or event to which their ex- 
pression seems peculiarly applicable. Sometimes, when the strain 
is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mournful recol- 
lection, Ave can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose 
marching to the royal cause notwithstanding all the perfidy of Charles 
and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufierings to 
enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive 
melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, 
when our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in 
caves, or to quit forever the land of their birth (liUe the bird which 
abandons the nest which human touch has violated ) ; and in many a 
song do we hear the last farewell of the exile, mingling regret for 
the ties he leaves at home with sanguine expectations of the honors 
that ^i wait him abroad — such honors as were won on the field of 
Fontenoy, where the valor of Irish Catholics turned the fortune of 
the day in favor of the French, and extorted from George II. the 
memorable exclamation, "Cursed be the laws that deprived me of 
such subjects ! " 



156 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Charming as are the strains of his national songs to the ears of the 
Irishman, their effect is grievously marred by being sung in a foreign 
tongue, like the hard, unmelodious English. This we can never un- 
derstand, for while the English has become to us a mother tongue, 
our own appears harsh, unmusical, nay to many, barbarous. And 
yet the Celtic is admitted by all philologists to be one of the oldest, 
the most prolific, the most musical, the most expressive languages 
ever spoken by man. In the expression of pathos it is unsurpassed. 
"If you plead for your life, plead in Irish," is a well-known adage. 
There was a time when it was the language of the poet and peasant 
alike — when it was the instrument of vigorous eloquence in the 
mouths of high-born dames. The Anglo-Saxon invaders took to it 
in preference to their own tongue. But its day is past. By the de- 
struction of the Irish nobility the national language became entrusted 
to the keeping of the poor and unlearned : the tongue that flourished 
in the castle fell into decadence and barbarism in the cottage, and it 
would be no more fair to judge of its ancient sweetness by the 
samples that fall from the li^DS of a modern mountaineer, than it 
would be to judge of the English by the jargon of Yorkshire. The 
contempt with which Irishmen have ever been regarded by their 
conquerors was visited to a great extent on the language of the sub- 
jugated country. "And yet what is there, it may be asked, in the 
Irish language to make worse men or worse subjects of those who 
speak it than the Welsh or the Highlanders, whose native dialects 
are cultivated and encouraged ? " Among the foremost to answer in 
the negative would have been King George IV. The warmest re- 
ception that monai'ch ever received from his numerous subjects was 
expressed by an Irish " Cead-mille-failthe," and amongst the best 
bulwarks of his throne were the bayonets of Ireland pushed through 
the hearts of his enemies under the broad-voweled Celtic cry of 
" Fag-a-ballagh ! " 

The Celtic language is peculiarly adapted to musical composition. 
Indeed, all candid critics admit that fact. In lyrical composition it 
is considered superior even to the Italian. This was the decided 
opinion of Michael Kelly, who knew both languages well, and .was 
too ardent a lover of music to let national prejudice bias his judg- 
ment. Irish worded music has been admired wherever its melting 
strains have been heard. Handel was loud in its praise, and Handel 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 157 

was a good judge of music. But, for us Irishmcu, it is enough to 
know that amongst our fellow-countrymen who know the language 
well, it is spoken of in terms of rapturous enthusiasm, as the noblest 
vehicle of thought, and the most faithful interpreter of every human 
passion. Poetic in its very prose, it is more than poetry when 
wedded to song. We have marked in our rviral peregrinations the 
deep emotions excited through the thronged chapel on a Sunday, 
when the priest addressed the people in their native tongue I We 
have seen the religious awe awakened by the description of the 
enoi-mity of sin, or the terrors of judgment — the sad sigh of pity 
evoked by some picture of human misery — the fervent, unanimous 
burst of assent to a prayer for a friend departed. At evening, by 
the merry fireside, we have heard the lay of some boyish unresisting 
minstrel, or coy pressed damsel swelling in melodious volume, or 
dwindling to a vocal thread, calling forth many a cordial "bravo," 
arousing in turn every varying passion of the soul. The perform- 
ance is generally poor, but there is a music in the words which com- 
pensates for the deficiencies of the singer ; and there is a poetry in 
the tale of national sutfering, and the fore-dawning of national hope, 
that warms upon the heart like returning sunbeams upon Arctic 
snows. 

To revive the national language appears to be now impossible — 
to perpetuate national music is an easy task. The tongue can soon 
unlearn its native language, while a melody echoes through genera- 
tions in the ears of men. There never was a more musical nation in 
the world than Ireland. In joy or in sorrow she was still the " Land 
of Song." The bards are gone, it is true, but the minstrels are more 
numerous now than ever they were. Music is included in the pro- 
gramme of all Irish education, and forms one of the most charming, 
as it is, doubtless, one of the most innocent of all our social amuse- 
ments. Had we been less poetical, less fanciful, we might have 
been also a happier people ; but we are in the hands of an all-wise 
and beneficent Power ; but let us hope for better things — not rashly 
seize them " ere the hour be ripe." The melancholy tones of Irish 
music may yet be changed into the exultant chords of jul)ilee. The 
world is changing every day, and why should not she, who is now 
abased, yet raise her head as of old, and attract by the magic of her 
beauty the pilgrims of science and religion to do homage once more 



158 TKEASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

at her feet? In such an era of general national revival, the Muse of 
Ireland, too, may resume her lost niche in the temple of our house- 
hold gods, and the harp — no longer the voiceless emblem of 
vanished glory — become the resuscitated instrument of perpetual 
nus'^al renown. 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. I59 



Lecture on John Philpot Curran* 



^i HAVE chosen for the subject of this Lecture the life and char- 
^^ acter of John Philpot Curran, one of the purest patriots, and 
vF most eloquent orators that Ireland, nay the world, has ever 
4 produced. And why do we lecture on the lives of great men? 
In the first place, in order that we may excite in the breasts of our 
hearers those feelings of admiration which human greatness merits ; 
for there is a tendency in our nature to admii'c all that is truly great 
and noble ; and, though our voices may not pierce the silent caverns 
of the dead, we cannot help paying, even to departed genius and 
worth, the well-deserved tribute of our praise. Again, by studying 
the lives and the actions of the truly great, we may learn to emulate 
their virtues or achievements, and thus not only do good for our- 
selves, but set a model, which others in their turn may copy, accoi'd- 
ing to that of your poet, — 

" Lives of great men all remind us 

.We slioiild make our lives sublime; 
And departing leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time." 

It would be quite possible for me (o propose for your considera- 
tion the lives of many greater men than John Philpot Curran ; men 
whose splendor of character did not, like his, radiate from only a few 
points, such as his unselfish patriotism, his marvellous eloquence, 
his wit and humor ; but men whoso whole souls, burning with a 
Divine fire, of which the fabled flame of Prometheus was but a poetic 
reflection, illumined the world by the lustre of their virtues, and 
enkindled a congenial warmth in the breasts of mankind by the 

* Delivered in New Yorlv, February, 1871. 



160 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE 

fervor of their zeal. Thus, I could have selected for my panegyi'io 
the life of that greatest philanthropist the world ever saw, the illus- 
trious Vincent de Paul, by the magic of whose memory we are 
assembled here to-night. But characters like these are too sacred, 
too God-like, to be paraded outside the consecrated walls of His 
temple whose servants they were ; and althougli the imitation of 
their sublime virtues is commendable, with a view to man's eternal 
welfare, we must remember that man has many duties to discharge 
in the world which are not sacred, but yet important ; there are 
many purely secular virtues and excellencies, of which he should 
prove himself master, that he may combat successful!}' with the 
difficulties of life, and attain that portion of merely temporal hap- 
piness which is not denied to good men even upon this earth. 
Consequently, as I am addressing you, not in my professional, but 
in my secular character — since I sjjeak to you as man to his fellow- 
men — I select for your admiration, and, as f;ir as possible, for your 
imitation, the life of John Philpot Curran ; not in all its features, 
for, alas ! in many things he was not a perfect model ; but under 
that manifold aspect which he wears, of an ardent, strongly-tempted, 
incorruptible patriot ; a lover of his country and his country's race, 
without distinction of class or creed ; an able and generous advocate ; 
an orator of surpassing power ; a wit and humorist the most enjoy- 
able ; a companion the most social, exquisite, and enchanting. 

I have thus thought it fit to dwell on the reasons why I place 
before you the life of a great man ; for I am not of those who seem 
to think that a lecture may be merely a thing to amuse — to pass an 
idle hour. I always hold that lectures, and similar addresses, should 
have in them something of a genuine utilitj'. We live in a hard, 
practical world — life is real — life is earnest. We must not be con- 
tent with amusement — with pleasure ; the enjoyment we derive 
from the lessons of a teacher must be always secondary to the 
instruction he conveys ; and few lessons are so instructive as the 
lives of great men, such as Curran was ; for we shall not only Jje 
struck by the prominent characteristics of his genius, but while 
we admire the sterling integrity of the patriot — while we are swayed 
by the impassioned vehemence of his oratory — while we are 
charmed by the graces of his wit, we shall learn the means by which 
that integrity was cultivated — by which that vehemence was 



KEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 261 

acquired, by which those graces were impai'tcd. Thus we shall feel 
an impulse to go and do likewise ; and if we cannot rival the maj- 
esty of Ciirran, we shall at least, reach that elevation, for the attain- 
ment of which an all- wise Pi'ovidence has befitted us. 

John Philpot Curran was born in the year 1750, and died in the 
year 1817, in the 68th year of his age. His parents were not of 
high degree ; and even if they were, his unprepossessing face and 
.figure would not have betrayed an aristocratic lineage. Physically 
he could boast only of a pair of black sparkling eyes, lit up with 
intellectual fire ; but all the rest was plain as Nature could have 
made it. "The only inheritance," he used to say, "that I could 
boast of from my poor father was, the very scanty one of an imat- 
tractive face and person, like his own ; and if the world has ever 
attributed to me something more valuable than face or person, or 
than earthly wealth, it was that another, and a dearer parent, gave 
her child a portion from the treasures of her mind." He always 
spoke with reverence and admiration of his mother — of her wise 
councils, and pious example. She lived to see him attain the high- 
est pinnacle of his fame ; and in his success, and her reward, we be- 
hold a beautiful double picture — the blessing of maternal care, and 
the triumph of filial affection. And here is at once a striking 
illustration of what I have just been saying — the means, so con- 
stantly visible in the lives of great men, by which their greatness is 
acquired. Curran's first step to greatness was a sacred respect for 
the admonitions of a prudent, clever, and virtuous mother. His 
boyhood was spent at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, his native 
town, where he was taken into the house of the Rev. Nathaniel Boyce, 
Rector of the parish, who instructed him in the teachings suitable to 
his age. He was subsequently educated in the Greek and Latin Clas- 
sics at a Free School at Middleton, in the same county ; and, finally, 
entei-ed Trinity College, Dublin, with a view to preparing himself 
for entering the Church as a clergyman. Here he changed his 
mind with regard to choosing a profession, and concluded to study 
for the Bar. Having obtained his degree at Trinity College, he 
passed over to England, and became a student of law in the Society 
of the Middle Temple, London. So little did he seem to be adapted 
by nature to be a great orator, that, what with timidity of disposi 
tion, and a natural impediment, he was generally known as " stutter- 



162 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ing J:ick CiirKin ; " and, on the finst trial of his oratorical powers, at 
a small debating club, formed of his fellow- students, he grew so 
bashful, that he was not even able to stutter, but sank silent and 
confounded into his chair. To his companions it seemed clear that 
his aspirations to lame, as an advocate, were worse than vain ; but a 
few evenings after, they had reason to change their minds ; for, 
being nettled to the quick by a contemptuous epithet flung at him, 
in the course of debate, he rose indignant, and burst forth with an 
imi:)assioned invective against the sneerer, couched in eloquent 
words, which only untutored nature can supply. This rival debater 
had referred to Curran as " orator JNIum ; " but orator Mum observing 
that his opponent's dress was remarkable for shabbiness and dii't, he 
assailed him vigorously on this point, and brought down the cheers 
and plaudits of the house. Curran whispered to a friend near him, 
"I think my dirty antagonist did not get clean otf ! " " No ; " replied 
his friend, "I never saw a man get such a dressing.'' 

Curran was called to the Irish Bar at Michaelmas Term, 1775» 
and, in his first essay as a lawyer, he evinced the same bashfulness 
"which had characterized him as a student. The first brief he held 
was in the Court of Chancery ; and he read the first sentences of his 
instructions in so precipitate and inaudible a manner, that the Lord 
Chancellor called on him to speak up. This so confused Curran, 
that the brief dropped from his hands, and a brother barrister was 
obliged to read the necessary passage. Four or five years elapsed 
before Curran's rare abilities attracted any remarkable attention. It 
was at the Cork Assizes, and his client was a priest. The circum- 
stances of the case present a good picture of the times. Lord Don- 
eraile had contracted an intimacy with a young woman, whose brother 
■was, no doubt, for good reasons, excommunicated by the parish 
priest, Father Neale, by the authority of the bishop. The young 
woman begged of Lord Doneraile to use his influence with the priest 
for the removal of the ban. His lordship wilhngly undertook the 
task. He pi-oceeded in his carriage to the house of the old priest, 
whom he found engaged at pra^^er. He demanded a removal of the 
excommunication from the brother of his paramour. The priest 
replied, that he could not remove it without the sanction of the 
bishop, which, however, he promised to apply for. The indignant 
noljleman, unaccustomed to refusals, especially from one w'hom ho 



REV. M. B. BXJCKI.EY. 163 

regarded witn supreme contempt, raised his iiaiid, and felled the 
unofleoding clergyman to the earth. The latter brought an action 
against the nobleman for assault and battery, and the case was 
regarded with much speculation as to results ; for, in the state of 
the law at the time, such a course on the part of a Catholic priest 
was considered the height of impudence and folly, especially when 
the cause was to be tried by a Protestant judge and jury, against a 
Pi-otestant nobleman of overwhelming influence in the country. It 
was doubtful whether any barrister would undertake so obnoxioiis 
and hopeless a cause. But Curran's soul was made of sterner stuff 
than men deemed ; and so successful was he in combating the preju- 
dices of all his hearers, that he obtained a verdict of thirty guineas 
damages against the noble defendant. This was a wonderful triumph 
of eloquence, and inaugurated a new era for the Catholics of Ireland. 
It afforded one proof that, by some possibility, they might not be 
trampled on with impunity. One ray of liberty was permitted to 
illumine an island shrouded for two centuries in the Egyptian dark- 
ness of the penal laws. Bnt the undaunted advocate had to give a 
further proof of his courage. He had indulged in a tierce attack 
upon Mr. St. Leger, the brother of Lord Doneraile, v/ho had accom- 
panied his noble brother to the priest's house, and aided in the 
assault. Curran denounced him as a renegade soldier — a drum- 
med out dragoon, who wanted the courage to meet the enemies of 
his country in battle, but had the heroism to raise his arm against an 
unoffending minister of religion. Duelling was the fashion of the 
day, and St. Leger challenged Curran to mortal combat. Speaking 
in a wordiy sense, it would have been ruin for Curran to decline this 
challenge ; for had he declined it, he could never afterwards use his 
privilege as an advocate of that freedom of speech so essential in 
counts of law. He would be constantly challenged, and constantly 
declining ; and he would thus incur the disgraceful stigmatism of a 
coward. But, without reasoning thus, impelled rather by native 
courage, he accepted the challenge, fought a bloodless battle, and 
acquired the reputation of one as bold in the field as he was fearless 
at the Bar. The oM priest, dying soon after, summoned Curran to 
his bedside, and imparted to the young and daring advocate his last 
blessing. It was the first of four duels that Curran had to fight 
during his public career. After this he became a great t;ivorite with 



164 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the Catholic people, who began to regard him as one of themselves. 
He was famiharl}^ termed the " counsellor," as O'Connell was subse- 
quently. He knew the Irish language well, and was particularly 
fond of chatting with the humbler classes of the people, whose 
wants, and feelings and virtues he thoroughly understood and appre- 
ciated. In his boyhood he had loved to attend weddings and wakes, 
and he was wont to tell how his firsf ideas of poetry and eloquence 
were inspired by the rhapsodies of professional mourners (cainors) 
over the dead. From this frequent intercourse with the poor people 
of the oppressed and persecuted country, his heart burned with the 
purest patriotic fire, and in his whole career he was accustomed to 
vindicate their character in public and private ; to descant upon their 
virtues and their sufferings ; and, although at various periods of his 
life, he could have accepted place and pension, by sacrificing their 
interests, he preferred to hold an honorable independence by which 
he could show up their calamities to the world, and battle for the 
restoration of their rights. "At any time," said he " I might, to a 
certain degree, as well as others, have tied up my countrymen in 
bundles, and sold them at the filthy market of corruption, and have 
raised myself to wealth and station, and remorse — to the envy of 
the foolish, and the contempt of the wise ; but I thought it more 
becoming to remain below among them — to mourn over and console 
them ; or, where my duty called upon me, to reprimand and rebuke 
them when they were acting against themselves." On his return to 
his native town every vacation, the people all swarmed around him, 
and offered their congratulations on his daily increasing honors ; and 
to every one he was courteous, kind and friendly. O'Connor, the 
roving bard, was never absent on these occasions. The moment the 
"counsellor's" arrival at the Priory was announced, there was the 
bard and his indefatigable muse, with the periodical tribute of high- 
sounding, long-winded praise. A silver crown was the poet's 
reward ; but, on some occasions, his demands became so frequent 
and importunate, that Curran was obhged to signify his displeasure. 
Instead of money he sent the bard a reply in verse ; but, if Curran's 
verses displayed elegance and taste, the bard's brief response was 
distinguished for point and force. He said : — 

" If 5'ou're paid so much coin for all your law, 
You'll ne'er be worth a single straw." 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 1(55 

The solicitations of the laureate could no longer bo resisted. Cur- 
ran was only seven years at the Bar when he became a member of 
the Irish Parliament, which post he filled until the year 1797. It 
was usual then, as now, for Government to desire that members of 
the Bar should enter Parliament, where they could be tempted to 
■sacrifice principle, in defending a corrupt system of administration, 
by the expectation of judicial' honours ; but all through his parlia- 
mentary cai'eer, John Philpot Currau, famed for his eloquence, and 
therefore a most desirable ally, resisted every temptation that could 
be offered him — and they were many — and maintained his i^urity 
ofhonor unsullied to the last. No consideration deterred him from 
asserting the rights of his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen to the 
political privileges from which they were persistently excluded. He 
showed up with a dauntless intrepidity, the bribery and corruption to 
which the Government had recourse in the administration of the conn- 
try. He bore with no enemy ; he tolerated no fraud ; he spared no 
menace or warning ; he prophesied the still greater calamities in store 
for his country ; but none would believe, until the bloody carnage and 
diabolical atrocities of '98, and the gold-bought Union of 1800, re- 
vealed the sagacity of the statesman, and the far-seeing vision of 
the prophet. 

Much as Curran's eloquence in Parliament is celebrated, it has 
been always considered as far inferior to his oi'atorical efforts at the 
Bar ; and in the year 1794 commenced that long array of State trials 
for political offences, at which he displaj^ed his surpassing forensic 
abilities. Then as now (it is the old, old story), a society started 
into existence in Dublin called United Irishmen, having for its ob- 
ject steadfast opposition to the corrupt Government of the country. 
Of this society Archibald Hamilton Rowan was secretary. He issued 
an address to the Irish Volunteers, reminding them of the dangers 
to which the country was exposed from foreign and domestic enemies, 
and inviting them to i-esume their arms for the preservation of the 
general tranquility. This publication was prosecuted as a seditious 
libel, and INIr. Curran was chosen to defend Rowan for his conduct. 
In his speech on this occasion are some of the loftiest flights of elo- 
quence ever presented to the world ; one passage particularly has 
attained an extraordinarj^ celebrity. A part of the publication of 
Mr. Rowan claimed universal emancipation for all Irish subjects, no 



166 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

matter of what religious persuasion. Mr. Curr.an replied on thia 
point : — " Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to in- 
sult them (the Catholics) , by sticking up in a pillory the man who 
dared to stand forth as their advocate ? I put it to j'our oaths — 
do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by 
justice over bigotry and oppression should have a stigma cast upon 
it, by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to 
propose that measure — to pi'opose the redeeming of religion from 
the almses of the Church, the reclaiming of three millions of men 
from bondage, and giving liberty to all who have a right to demand 
it? — giving, I saj^ in the so-much-censured words of this paper — 
giving universal emancipation ? I speak in the spirit of the British 
law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, 
British soil ; which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, 
the moment he sets his foot upon the British earth, that the ground 
on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of uni- 
versal emancipation. No matter in wh.at language his doom may 
have been pronounced — no matter in what complexion, incompatible 
with freedom, an Indian or an African sun nm}^ have burned upon 
him — no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been 
cloven down — no matter with what solemnities he may have been 
devoted upon the altar of slavery — the first moment he touches the 
sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the 
dust ; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; his body swells 
beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him ; and 
he stands redeemed, regenei-ated, and disenthralled by the irresistible 
genius of universal emancipation." 

It is needless for me to particularize in detail the several trials in 
■which Curran figured ; but there was one, the circumstances of 
■which illustrate very forcibly the state of Ireland at this period. 
It was the trial of the brothers John and Henry Sheares. These 
gentlemen, members of the Irish Bar, had been deepl}' implicated in 
the abortive rebellion of '98 ; and when it was crushed, and the 
Executive had breathing time to look around, it was determined 
that some of the ringleaders of the movement should be sacrificed 
upon the scaffold, to deter others from renewing the ci'ime of insur- 
rection. The Sheares Brothers were the first victims selected. Lord 
Carlton was the judge, a humane and gentle functionary, a warm 



KEY. M. B. BUCKLEY. IQJ 

and devoted friend of Curran, and once the bosom friend of the 
Sheaves' fiither. The Attorney-General was the infamous Toler, 
afterwards Lord Norbmy, the bloodthirsty and scoffing judge, who 
could smile, and joke, and pun, while passing sentence of death 
upon his victim. The trial began in the morning, and it was mid- 
night when Curran rose to address the jury for the defence. Why 
was not the ti'ial postponed until the following day ? Because the 
sanguinary law, personified by the savage Toler, thirsted for its 
prey, and would not be gainsayed. We can well imagine the wear- 
iness of an advocate's brain, and the languor of his body, after the 
labors of a whole day in a narrow court-house. He made an ap- 
peal for postponement. " After a sitting of sixteen hours," said he, 
"with only twenty minutes' interval in these times, I should hope it 
■would not be thought an obtrusive request, to hope for a few hours' 
interval, for repose, or rather for recollection." But no, the minister 
of the law was inexorable ; the trial must go on to the bitter end. 
Then Curran rose. Behold the scene ! the ermined judge upon the 
bench ; in the dock the patriot brothers, standing on the brink of 
their yawning graves ; the faces of the spectators in the galleries and 
in the body of the court, silent witnesses of the grim tragedy ; the 
struggle between the darkness and the flickering flames of tallow 
candles ; the solemn hour of midnight ; the nature of the cause, 
namely, the wretched condition of Ireland, and the forging of new 
links in the chain of persecution ; the throbbings of hatred and re- 
sentment, and awe and anger, in the silent breasts of the people ; 
and then, the insatiable, ghoul-like Attorney-General, lusting for 
blood — for the young, fresh, pure blood — of the unhappy brothers, 
who loved their country "not wisely but too well." Curran's ap- 
peal for postponement was made in vain. "The counsel for the 
prisoners," said Toler, "cannot be more exhausted than those for the 
prosecution ; if they do not choose to speak to the evidence, we 
shall give up our right to speak, and leave the matter to the court 
altogether. They have had two speeches already, and leaving them 
unreplied to is a great concession." Then, the wearied but indomit- 
able Curran rose. " Gentlemen of the jury," said he, " it seems that 
much has been conceded to us, God help us ! I do not know what 
has been conceded to me — if so insignificant a person may have ex- 
torted the remark. Perhaps it is a concession that I am allowed to 



IQg TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

arise in such a state of mind and body, of collapse and deprivation, 
as to feel but a little spark of indignation i-aised by the remark that 
much has been conceded to the counsel for the prisoners. Almighty 
and merciful God ! who lookest down upon us, what are the times 
to which we are reserved, when we are told that much has been con- 
ceded to prisoners who are put upon their trial at a moment like 
this, of more darkness and night of the human intellect than a dark- 
ness of the natural period of twenty-four hours, that public con- 
Tenience cannot spare a respite of a few hours to those who are 
accused for their lives ; and that much has been conceded to the 
advocate, almost exhausted, in the poor remarks which he has en- 
deavored to make upon it ! " Curran went on with his mournful 
and hopeless duty till the rays of the morning sun dispelled the 
gloom of night. Between seven and eight o'clock that morning a 
verdict of guilty was returned ; the brothers clasped each other in 
their arms, the sentence was pronounced, and, after the lapse of 
only twenty-four hours more, the brothers lay in their coffins, lifeless 
and bloody trunks : two new names were added to the martyrology 
of Irish patriots — two new names by which to swear eternal ven- 
geance to British law. 

Curran's frequent and zealous defence of men called in the lan- 
guage of the law " rebellious " gave ofi'ence to those in power. They 
could not understand why felons should have anything more than 
the bare form of a trial, and, therefore, they were filled with indig- 
nation when finding an advocate availing himself of such trials to 
inveigh against the cruelties of the Government, the perversion of 
law, the oppression of the people ; in fact, encouraging violence and 
sedition. He was branded as a traitor, because he sought the protec- 
tion of the law for those who had been accused of violating it ; on 
his way into court he frequently i-eceived anonymous letters threat- 
ening him with assassination. On one occasion, he had to defend 
himself in the* House of Commons from the charge of having for- 
feited the character of "a good subject," by the zeal with which he 
defended his clients. But he i-emained steadfast and fearless in the 
conscious pride of having fulfilled his duty. "I am heavily cen- 
sured," said he, "for having acted for them in the late prosecutions ; 
I feel no shame at such a charge, except that of its being made at 
such a time as this, that to defend the people should be held up as 



KIOV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 1(59 

an imputation upon the King's counsel, when the peoi^le are prose- 
cuted by the State. I think every counsel is the property of his 
fellow-suhjects. If, indeed, because I wore his Majesty's gown I 
had declined my duty, or had done it weakly or treacherously — if I 
had made that gown a mantle of hypocrisy, and had betrayed my 
client, or sacrificed him to any personal view — I might, perhaps, 
have been thought wiser by those who have blamed me, but I should 
have thought myself the basest villain upon earth." 

In CuiTan's character there was much of the grave and solemn^ 
nay, there was a high tone of religion ; and it was no uncommon 
thing for him, when appealing to a jury on behalf of a client whose life 
■was at stake, to bring before their minds the terrors of the judgment 
that awaited themselves at the hour of death. And this he did not 
in a spirit of rhetorical afl'ectation, much less in a spirit of hypocrisy, 
but as one thoroughly imbued with the awful impressions which he 
would fain impart to his hearers. Nevertheless, in private, and 
sometimes in public, he displayed a wit and humor evincing a most 
vivacious temperament : and as we always more willingly hear what 
makes us smile rather than be sad, I shall relate for you some in- 
stances of Curran's wit, to divert 3'ou for a while from the serious 
contemplation of his character. 

Many of you are, no doubt, familiar with the following : One day 
Curran, on entering the court, observed one of the barristers whose 
wig for some reason excited the attention and provoked the loud 
laughter of his fellow-la W3fers. "Curran," he exclaimed, "do 
you see anything ridiculous in this wig?" Curran replied, " No, my 
dear fellow, nothing but the head." 

A hot fool, plunged in distress, was playing at billiards, and hav- 
ing wagered his only guinea on the success of the game, became 
tremulously anxious on the last stroke of the ball, perceiving the 
clock giving notice to strike one, as he hoped, and fearing some dis- 
traction he paused for a moment ; another and another succeeded, 
until the clock went on insensibly to twelve. Thus suspended, his 
irritation increased, and he played and lost, and in his rage, seizing 
the ball, drove it at the clock with such fury and force that he broke 
it in pieces ; the owner sought compensation and obtained it. This 
being related in presence of Curran, he oljserved that the damages- 
should be small, as the clock struck Jivd. 



J 70 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Some time after the Union, Curran was walking by the Parliament 
House with a certain member, a friend of his, who had supported that 
measure. This gentleman observed that he never passed that House 
without the deepest melancholy and regret. "I do not wonder at 
it," said Curran, " I never knew a man who had committed murder 
who was not haunted by the ghost of the murdered whenever he came 
to the spot where the foul deed was done." 

Such was the efiect of Curran's pleasantry, that, even on ordinary 
occasions, servants in attending on the table often became suspended, 
like the bucket in the well, and frequently started as if from a rev- 
erie when called upon for ordinary attendance. Sometimes a wine- 
glass could not be had, or, if asked for, a knife or fork was presented 
in its place ; their faces turned away, you heard nothing Init sup- 
pressed laughter. He had a favorite negro servant M'ho lived with 
him many years, and to whom for his great fidelity Curran was very 
much attached. This poor fellow was observed for a few days befoi-e 
his departure to have been oppressed with gloom and sadness, the 
cause of which was not directly inquired into. One morning, while 
in this state, he came anxiously to his master, and with apparent 
regret and an air of dejection requested to be discharged. Curran 
told him that he was very much concerned to lose the services of so 
ver}' faithful a person, that he had a strong regard for him, &c., and 
on inquiring into the reason for leaving him, the black man replied, 
" It is impossible for me to remain longer with you, massa." "Why, 
my good fellow, we will see you well taken care of! " "No, massa, 
I cannot live any longer with you, I am losing my health with you, 
you make me laugh too much ! " 

Curran was once engaged on behalf of a tradesman, a citizen of 
Dublin, who had been ill-treated. Injury was added to insult, he 
was horsewhipped, beaten down and falsely imprisoned. He com- 
plained, through Curran, to a Court of Justice, and a jury listened 
to his tale of woe and sufferings, which wanted not the coloring of 
imagination ; it was most aff'ectingly told by his counsel ; he spared no 
ornaments to dress out the victim who had already suffered so much. 
His appeals were deeply affecting, because natural. He gave up to 
the jury the case of an innocent and oppressed man, in terras which 
were directed to the heart ; the jury and the audience were touched ; 
but the client, who heard all, was so overwhelmed that he bur.st 



EEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 171 

forth from the silence he had so long maintained, with a sudden ex- 
clamation accompanied by tears, "Oh! my lord and gentlemen," 
said he, "all the counsel has told you is true, every word of it; but 
until this moment I never knew that I was so cruelly ill-treated." 

If Curran was ever wantonly attacked, he replied in a manner 
which his adversary would not be likely to forget. When he was 
quite a young member of the Bar, and therefore more exposed than 
his maturer brethren to the shafts of his opponents, being one day 
engaged in a case before Judge Robinson, he chanced to say, " My 
lord, I have never met the law as laid down by your lordship in any 
book in MT library." "That may be, sir," said the Judge, in an 
acid, contemptuous tone ; " but I suspect that your library is very 
small." Now his lordship, who was known to be a very bigoted 
party zealot, was, like others of his day, the author of several 
anonymous publications remarkable for their despotic principles and 
violent excesses. The young barrister, roused by the sneer at his 
circumstances, replied that true it was his library might be small, 
but he tlianked heaven that amongst his books there were none of 
the wretched productions of the frantic pamphleteers of the day. 
"I find it more instructive, my lord, to study good woi'ks than to 
compose bad ones. My books may be few, but the title-pages give 
me the authors' names : my shelves are not disgi'aced by any of 
such rank absurdity that their very authors are ashamed to own 
them." He was here interrujjted by the Judge, who said, "Sir, yoa 
are forgetting the respect which you owe to the dignity of the ju- 
dicial character." " Dignity, my lord !" exclaimed Curran, " upon 
that point I shall cite you a case from a book of some authority, 
with which, jierhaps, you are not unacquainted. A poor Scotch- 
man, upon his arrival in London, thinking himself insulted by a 
stranger, and imagining that he was the stronger man, resolved to 
resent the affront, and taking off his coat delivered it to a bystander 
to hold ; but having lost the battle he turned to resume his garment, 
when he unfortunately discovered that he had lost that also ; that 
■the trustee of his habiliments had decamped during the fvay. So, 
my lord, when a person who is invested with the dignity of the 
judgment seat lays it aside for a moment to enter into a disgraceful 
l^ersonal contest, it is vain when he has been worsted in the encounter, 
that he seeks to resume it — it is in vain that he seeks to shelter 



172 TREASUKY OF ELOIJUENCE. 

himself behind tiie autiiority whicli he has abandoned." " If you 
say another word, sir, I'll commit you,'" cried the Judge. "Then, 
my lord," said Curran, " it will be the best thing you committed this 
Term." The Judge did not commit him, but he made an attempt to 
have Curi'an deprived of his gown. He received, however, so little 
encouragement, that he deemed it prudent to forsake the attempt. 

John Home Tooke, a philosopher living in England in Curran's 
time, once asked an Irish gentleman what was thought of Curran's 
talents at home, as compared with those of Sheridan. The gentle- 
man replied that, in the opinion of his countrymen, no man living 
was conceived to possess such brilliancy, richness, and variety as 
Curran. Hornc Tooke replied, ''I know both these gentleman, and 
I know them well, both in public and in private : Sheridan is labored 
and polished : you alwaj-s see the marks of the chisel and hammer 
about him ; Curran is a rich and glittering ore, wliich is raised from 
the mine without effort, and in the most exuberant profusion." Byron 
was a great admirer of John Philpot Curran. Despite the inex- 
haustible resources of his own fancy, he did not disdain to borrow 
some of liis imagery from the Irish orator. Speaking on a public 
occasion, on the subject of the Union, Curran had said, "The Irish 
Protestant was cajoled into the belief that if he concurred in the 
surrender of his country, he would be placed on the neck of a hostile 
faction ! Wretched dupe ! you might as well persuade (he gaoler 
that he is less a prisoner than the captives he locks up, merely because 
he carries the key in his pocket.^' Byron had copied this idea from 
Curran, and admitted the fact, 

" The nations are 

In prison, — but tlie gaoler, what is lie.? 

No lesser victim to the bolt and bar. 

To the poor privilege to turn the key 

Upon the captive, freedom ! He's as fiir 

From the enjoyment of the earth and air 

Who watches o'er the chains, as those who wear." 

But this was not all of Byron's estimation of Curran. He M'roto of 
him thus, "I have met Curran at Holland House; he beats every- 
body, his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is 
difficult to define what is wit) pei-fect. He has fifty faces, and twice 
as manj"^ voices, Avhen he mimics. I never met his equal." Again, 
" Curran ! Curran is the man who struck me most. Such im- 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 173 

agination ! There was never anything like it. He was wonderful 
even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time. The 
riches of his Irish imagination were inexhaiistilile. I have heard 
that man speak more poetr}' than I have ever seen written, though I 
saw him seldom andjjut occasionally^" 

Lord Erskine, a lawyer, and subsequently a Judge on the English 
Bench, was a contemporary of Curran's, and one who had acquired 
great fame as an orator of the first degree. His merits and those 
of Curran frequently formed a subject of comparison. They were 
both once dining at the table of George the Fourth, then Prince of 
Wales. This royal personage, despite his voluptuous tendencies, 
had the good taste to gather round his table the collective genius, 
learning, and wit of the kingdom. On the occasion in question. His 
Roj^al Highness, out of respect for his guests, directed the conver- 
sation to the legal profession. Lord Erskine eloquently took the 
lead : "No man in the land," said he, "need be ashamed to belong 
to such a profession. For my part, of a noble family myself, I felt 
no degradation in practising it — it has added not only to my wealth 
but to my dignity." Curran was silent, which the host observing, 
called on him for his opinion. "Lord Erskine," says Curran, "has 
so eloquently described all the advantages to be derived from the 
profession that I hardly thought my poor oiiinion was worth adding. 
But perhaps it was that I am a better practical instance of it than 
his lordship — he was ennobled by birth before he came to us, but it 
has," said he making an obeisance to his royal host, "it has, in my 
person raised the son of a peasant to the table of his prince ! " 

Lord Byron has contrasted Erskine and Curran in one of his 
poems, at a period ten years previous to the time when he wrote the 
eulogy of Curran just quoted, and when his knowledge of the Irish 
orator was only fresh. He designates Curran "Longbow," and 
Erskine " Strongbow." Enumerating the guests at a dinner party, 
lie says : — 

"There also were two wits, by acclamation 

Lougbow from Ireland, Strongbow from the Tweed, 
Both lawyers, and both men of education ; 

But Strongbow's wit was of more polished breed. 
Longbow was rich in an imagination, 

As beautiful and bounding as a steed, 
But sometimes stumbling over a potato, 
While Strongbow's best things might have come from Cato. 



274 Tr.EASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

" Strongbow was like a new tuner! harpsichord, 

But Longbow wild as an ^olian harp, 
With which the winds of Heaven can claim accord, 

And make a music either flat or sharp. 
Of Strongbow's talk you would not change a word; 

At Longbow's phrases you would sometimes carp; 
Both wits — one born so, and the other bred — 

This by the heart, his rival by the head." 

Curran's domestic happiness was shrouded by two melancholy 
catastrophes, sufficient to break the spirits of a gayer and livelier 
temperament than his. His daughter lost her heart to a young gen- 
tleman named Robert Emmet, who was on visiting terms at Curran's 
house. Surely never did maiden lay the treasures of her love at the 
feet of one more worthy of them than this young Robert Emmet, 
the purest patriot, and the grandest soul that ever loved a country — 
that ever wooed a damsel — ever met a patriot martyr's death. His 
fruitless insurrection cost him his liberty, but did not change his 
heart; he could have fled, but his love would not permit him to go 
far from the mistress of his affections. He was arrested, and his 
blood stained the scaffold. 

" He had lived for his love, for his country he died ; 
They were all that to life had entwined him ; 
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, 
Nor long shall his love stay behind him." 

This was too much for Curran. His young and fair daughter doomed 
to disappointment, melancholy, and a broken heart, the young friend 
■whom he loved " torn like a blasted oak sudden away ; " but what 
was more vexatious than bitter, was the susjjicion that would arise 
concerning his loyalty, from the fact that the young conspirator had 
such close intimacy with himself, and had so frequently visited his 
house. He knew that those suspicions would arise, and he de- 
termined to anticipate any action on the part of the Government. 
He went and delivered up all his papers to the Attorney-General, 
who invited him into the presence of the Privy Council, where all 
was made clear, and he was saved from further trouble. But a far 
greater aifliction than this was in store for him. His wife, after a 
quarter of a century from the date of their marriage, proved un- 
faithful, and eloped with a dissipated clergyman, a Rev. Mr. Sandys. 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 175 

She afterwards repented ; and though CuiTan never lived with her 
after, she was supported by his bounty up to the time of her death. 
In the year 1806, Curran was raised to the dignity of Master of the 
Rolls in Ireland. His judicial decisions were as remarkable for their 
justice, as his advocacy had been for its eloquence. I have ah-eady 
sufficiently implied, if I have not broadly stated, that Curran was of 
the Protestant religion ; but he knew not what bigotry was, and he 
cherished the affections of his heart for the degraded Catholic, as 
well as for his own co-religionists basking in the sunshine of patron- 
age and power. I select one instance of his broad toleration, worthy 
of the noblest mind. A will case came befoi-e him, and it was 
alleged that the will was fraudulently obtained by " one John Power, 
a Popish priest." "I see no semblance of the fact," says Curran, 
" to sustain such a charge. Who does this ' one John Power, a Popish 
priest', turn out to be? I find he is a Catholic clergyman, a Doctor 
of Divinity, a Titular Bishop in the diocese of Waterford. And yet 
I am now pressed to believe that this gentleman has obtained this 
will by fraud. Every fact now appearing repels this charge. I 
cannot but say that the personal character of the person accused 
repels it still more strongly. Can I be brought, on grounds like 
those now before me, to believe that a man having the education of 
a scholar, the habits of a religious life, and vested with so high a 
character in the ministry of the Gospel, could be capable of so de- 
testable a profanation as is flung upon him ? Can I forget that he 
is a Christian Bishop, clothed not in the mere authority of a sect, 
but clothed in the indelible character of the Episcopal order ; suffer- 
ing no diminution from his supposed heterodoxy, nor drawing any 
increase or confirmation from the merits of his conformity, should 
he think proper to renounce what we call the errors of his faith ? 
Can I bring my mind, on so slight, or, rather, on no grounds, to 
believe that he could so trample under his feet all the impressions 
of that education, of those habits, and of that high rank in the 
sacred ministry of the Gospel v,'hich he holds, as to sink to the odious 
impiety which is imputed to him ? Can I bring myself to believe 
that such a man, at the bedside of his dying fellow-creature, would 
be capable, with one hand, of presenting the cross before her uplifted 
eye, and with the other, of basely thieving from her the miserable 
dregs of this woi'ld, of which his perfidious tongue was employed in 



176 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

teacbinsj hei* a Christian's estimate? I do not believe it; on the con- 
trary, I am (as far as it belongs to me in this interlocntory way to 
judge of the fact) as perfectly convinced that the conduct of Dr. 
Power was what it ought to be, as I am that the testatrix is dead." 

Curran died in London, on the 1 4th of October, 1817, in the 68th 
j-ear of his age ; and it now becomes our duty to take a brief retro- 
spect of his career ; and photograph, as it were to your mind's eye, 
the character of the man, so that we may store it away into our in- 
tellectual album, and cherish it for perpetual admiration. Curran's 
life and character were the life and character of the orator and 
the patriot, the advocate of his country's rights, the advocate of 
justice to persecuted man. We cannot conceive him except as the 
personification of eloquence and patriotism. All his battles, and 
All his triumphs, were fought and achieved in the senate, or at the 
bar; he was ever either seeking to benefit his fellow-countrymen 
by the enaction of just laws, or striving to save them from the 
pei'ils of laws already passed — passed in a spirit of diabolical 
hatred, and enforced with a vindictiveness still more atrocious. 
All the labors of his life, all the efforts of his genius, all the 
treasures of his intellect, all the sacrifices of his fame and fortune, 
were at the service of Ireland and the Irish. His silence could 
have been bought, were he venal, and tiie advocate of Ireland's 
rights could have been transformed into the approver and abettor 
of Ireland's wrongs ; but thanks to his integrity of character, he 
spurned the arts of corruption, and his name, instead of being a 
bye-word of national shame and disgrace, stands forth as a beacon 
light to guide and cheer posterity. 

His eloquence was of the very highest order ; it was not the 
eloquence of art, carefully studied and prepared, and delivered 
with histrionic effort, and dramatic grace ; it was not eloquence 
manufactured according to the inflexible rules of rhetoricians. No : 
Curran sounded the depths of the human heart, not as it is in some 
parts of the world, not as it is moulded and shaped under certain in- 
fluences, not as it may be moved by any special or peculiar modes 
of appeal, but as it is in every human l)reast, as it is made by God, 
the seat of passion and sentiment, the soft wax on which God has 
impressed those principles of rectitude which neither climate, nor 
•education, nor any local influence can alter or erase ; hence Curran 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 177 

is always stirring up the hearts and emotions of his hearers ; he is 
ever awakening .slumbering conception, faded remembrances, early 
impressions ; ever exciting tenderness, pity, remorse ; ever vindi- 
cating the principle of God's eternal justice ; ever harping on the 
sweet but melancholy chord of human conscience. This character- 
istic of Curran's eloquence alone would be sufficient to stamp it as 
sublime. I have already spoken of Curran's imagination. It was a 
marvel of its kind. Tropes and figures, and images, sparkled 
through his speech in such brightness and profusion that his elo- 
quence was like a river with a bed of golden sands, illumined by 
the bright sunshine of genius. "His imagination," says Byron, "is 
beyond human." His wit and humor also were transcendent, and 
under more favorable circumstances might have graced his oratory 
more than they have done ; but he lived and spoke at a time when 
wit, for the most part, would savor of levity, and humor would l^e 
simpl}'' heartless. The events of his day were too grave for the 
lighter efforts of oratory ; he loved his kind in a spirit of true 
philanthropy, and his heart bled to witness the persecutions and 
bloodshed to which they were victimized, and the cold calculatii g 
baseness with which their lives and liberties Averc sold and purchased. 
Hence his oratory frequently partakes of the scathing, and the sar- 
castic, and the objurgative. He inveigliecl in tones of thunder 
against the vices of his country's oppressors ; he told Judges and 
juries to their faces that they were trampling on the sacred rights of 
justice, and this he did with a boldness and courage worthy of a 
cause so noble. "You may assassinate me," said he, on one occa- 
sion, when the court-house was surrounded with militar}^ "j^ou may 
assassinate me, ^ut you cannot intimidate me." Yes, in Curran's 
eloquence there is scarcely a feature moi'e remarkable than his in- 
domitable courage. No speaker ever needed that virtue more, and 
few dispkiyed it to such perfection. Indeed it has been said of the 
greatest speeches celebrated in history that they were spoken at 
times when personal danger most threatened their deliverers. We 
have seen and admired his courage in defending Father Neale, the 
humble priest, against the pampered and cowardly lordling of Doncr- 
aile. We have seen him challenged four times to mortal combat, 
and four times accepting the challenge, for the courage with which 
he pleaded the causes of his clients. Ireland was then suffering under 



178 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

a reign of terror. Trial by law was a contemptible farce, a wretched 
mockery, a bare formality ; the number of persons executed by law 
fell far short of those sacrificed in butcheries and burnings by a bar- 
barous soldiery let loose upon an unoffending and defenceless people. 
In times like these Curran stood alone. In pleading the cause of 
the accused he had to run the danger of being supposed to sympa- 
thize with their sentiments and conduct ; and in paying them the 
humane tribute of his advocacy, he had to incur the rancorous hatred 
of those who tortured and oppressed them. 

Pathos was a remarkal)le feature of Curran's eloquence. He had 
the soul of a true poet, and tenderness, and melancholy, and pity, 
those soft, sweet, sad emotions, are the noblest treasures in the poet's 
soul. They were essentially his ; he loved solitude, and often at- 
tuned his soul to the solemn tones of his violoncello, when no one 
else was nigh. He loved to play old Irish airs ; their sadness 
pleased him, and their occasional loveliness gave to the sombre 
clouds of his thoughts their silver lining. Those sad strains nurtured 
within him the sympathies awakened by the actual contemplation of 
his country's wrongs. He wept and sighed, and lamented over her 
desolation; there was a music, a rhythm in his speech according 
exquisitely with the jiassion of his thoughts, so that the whole might 
seem to the rapt listener the wail of one of Sion's children attuned 
to the melancholy music of his harp on the lonely rivers of Babylon. 
"He was one of those," says a distinguished writer (Giles) "whose 
thoughts make melody in conception, and which coming into words 
are born into song. All his faculties were musical, his intellect, his 
imagination, his emotions ; and these, all having spontaneous union 
and utterance in his eloquence, made that eloquence the witchcraft 
and magic that it was. This made it different from all other elo- 
quence, not in power, but in kind ; it was not so much the eloquence 
of logic as of enchantment, not so much like the sword of Goliath 
as like the harp of David." 

Cui-ran's humor was often such that one would not know whether 
to say it was laughable or serious ; it became so severely sarcastic. 
Thus, on one occasion, when contesting an election, he said to the 
voters of the rival candidate, that "they might he seen coming like 
the beasts of the field, in droves, from their pastures, presenting a 
picture of human nature, in the state of degradation sneh as never 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY 179 

had been witnessed since Nebuchadnezzar was at grass." Of an 
Irish secretary, for whom he had a great contempt, he said, when 
inveighing against him, that he would not imitate the Roman tyrant's 
practice of " tortui'ing insects." He described an English ministry 
as "a motley group, without virtue, or character, or talents; the 
sort of Cabinet we have laughed at on the stage, where the 'potent, 
grave, and reverend seignors ' were composed of scene-shifters and 
candle-snufters, robed in old curtains, and wigged from the stores of 
the theatre." On another occasion he spoke of " the princely virtues 
and imperial qualifications, the consui^imate wisdom and sagacity of 
our steadfast friend and ally, the Emperor of all the Russias — a 
constellation of all virtue, compared with whose radiance the Ursa 
Major but twinkles as the glowworm." 

Curran is supposed by some to be one of those who established 
"what has been called the school of Irish eloquence, that is, fervid, 
impassioned oratory, appealing to the feelings, and careless of 
impressing the intellect. This style of eloquence is spoken of with 
contempt, and justly should it be so, if the speaker did not convince 
the reason as well as move th« heart ; and, no doubt, our country 
has produced many such speakers, gifted by nature with a wondrous 
flow of words, sparkling with imagery, heated with passion, vivid 
with Celtic fire. We meet them in private life, we meet them on 
the public platform. The village pedagogue is peculiar to Ireland ; 
the man who uses words of " learned length and thundering sound ;" 
who mistakes paraphrases for oratory, and sound for sentiment ; the 
village poet is no less I'acy of the Irish soil ; the dreamer who is 
ever wandering in the bright morning of May, by the green banks of 
some sparkling river, where he encounters a lovely damsel, who first 
declines his amorous attentions, but finally consoles him with her 
hand and heart. In no country in the world is a debate so warmly 
and enthusiastically, and so eloquently, conducted as in Ireland. 
There the oratory on both sides is so fairly balanced that victory is 
often impossible without the intervention of the fists or tlie black- 
thorn, which has an effect far more stunning than wordy arguments 
on an adversary. Yes, there is an Irish school of oratory, and it 
■was about Curran's time it came into vogue. When, indeed, was 
there such occasion for it? When the speaker's passions were 
aroused by the contemplation of the cruelties with which his country 



180 TKEASUiiY OF KLOQUENCE. 

was visited, and the sufferings his countrymen endured, the coldest 
nature sliould be eloquent, when speaking of those atrocious deeds. 
The grandest specimens of eloquence ever recorded in history were 
delivered in times of great social strife, great national upheaving, 
amid the ruins of a country, or over the cradle of a young revolution. 
It was towards the close of the Hebrew nationality that their prophets 
started up and proclaimed the ruin and captivity about to befal their 
fellow-countrymen. What eloquence can compare with tliat of Isaiah, 
sublime and impassioned? or with Jeremiah, wailing and despondent 
over the calamities of their race? Demosthenes flourished — the 
greatest orator the world ever saw — amid the crash of the Grecian 
republics. Cicero was the last orator of Rome : standing on the 
bridge that separated the prosperous Rome of the Consuls from the 
effete and degenerate Rome of the CiBsars. Mirabeau's eloquence 
flamed like a meteor amid the chaos of the French Revolution. So 
it was with Curran ; he lived and spoke when his native land was 
steeped to the very lips in woe ; when " 't was treason to love her, 
and death to defend." Manifold were the thoughts that stirred his 
brain and quickened his tongue ; the ancient glory of his country, 
the virtues of her children, their courage and constancy, through 
every peril and misfortune ; the gleam of sunshine, short and tran- 
sient, beaming from the Irish Parliament, and its sudden extinction 
in the Act of Union. Here was food for thought ; here was fuel for 
the fire of eloquence, pride, passion, glory, hope, and, last of all, 
despair ! Peace be with thy ashes, John Philpot Curran, as they 
repose in the sacred soil of Glasnevin, and may th}' memory be ever 
cherished with pride by the grateful descendants of those in fighting 
whose battles thou didst display the sublimest valor of heroism, and 
the purest chastity of honor 1 




BRIAN BOIRANHE KILLED BY THE V'K NG 



EEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. Jgl 



Lecture.* 



The Irish Character Ajstaltzed. 

^^OME weeks ago I had the honor to deliver a public lecture in this 
1^1 city on the HQstory of Irish Music. The apjilause awarded 
pf to me on that occasion was such as I fancied no eflbrts of 
I, mine could have merited ; but my modesty was put to a still 

severer test when some gentlemen informed me that it was the gen- 
eral wish of the public — at least of the Irish portion of the public 
— that I should lecture again before leaving Boston. So flattering 
an invitation it was impossible for me to decline, I promised to com- 
ply with the general desire, and I am here to I'edeem that promise. 
I know full well the love that Irishmen cherish for their country, 
and that no subject awakens their interest more keenly, or stirs their 
hearts more sensitively, than the subject of their native land. And, 
hence, there is scarcely a period of our history, a feature of our 
national character, or a biography of any of our great men, Avhich 
has not, in its turn, formed the subject of a lecture in this country, 
as well as in the old land. One would think that Irish subjects 
would pall even on Irish ears, by such frequent repetition ; but it is 
with the children of the Emerald Isle, as it is with the children of the 
Church. In the Church there has been but one short gospel for the 
last eighteen hundred years, and yet we hear it expounded to-day, at 
the hands of an able j^reacher, with all that freshness of interest 
which only a novelty, as we fancy, could produce. So the history 
of Ireland is but a plain record of constant persecution on the one 
hand, and constant resistance on the other, — a perpetual resistance 
against a superior and implacable power, — and yet we never grow 

♦Delivered in Boston, 1871. 



132 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

weary of the oft-told tiile ; we ever still find something new and 
inspiring in this simple gospel of our fatherland. 

I come to address you to-night on a subject of national interest, an 
analysis of the character of my fellow-countrymen ; and, simply, 
because the subject is national, I am confident that I shall touch your 
hearts and enlist your sympathies. But I do not trust alone to the 
nature of my subject ; I feel that I come before you as one thor- 
oughly qualified to speak on any Irish subject, as far as one may be 
qualified by a long and large experience. I am Irish, myself, to the 
back-bone, — aye, and to the very marrow of that cunning piece of 
mechanism. Born of Irish parents, on the banks of the Lee, within 
sound of the Shandon Bells, I should like to know who would have 
the courage to dispute the Hibernicism of my birth. Imbibing, 
when a schoolboy, my first lessons of patriotism from the glorious 
pages of the "Nation" newspaper, illumined then, as it was, by the 
calm vigor of a Dufly, the immortal fire of a Davis, and the weird 
majesty of a Clarence Mangan ; later on, dipping in the fervid foun- 
tain of the young Ireland press : a fountain springing from a Parnas- 
sus, where the muses were invoked by such men as John Mitchell, 
Thomas D'Arcy Magee, and Thomas Francis Meagher, it is no won- 
der that my Irish heart beat with the true pulses of the patriot. 
During six years in Maynooth College, thi-own amongst five hundred 
ardent young Irishmen, although we were endowed by the Govern- 
ment (which endowment, by the way, was only a wretched instal- 
ment of the millions they had stolen from us centuries before) , I 
never forgot I was Irish. Ofiiciating for eight years in the rural 
districts of the county, and for eight other years in the city of Cork, 
it is highly probable that I understand the state of my country ; the 
condition and character of the Irish race in every walk of life, our 
virtues and our vices, our strength and our weakness ; and that I am 
qualified to address my audience on that subject. 

The great faith and hope of Irishmen at home and abroad is that 
their country will yet be free. If they had not this hope, they would 
despair of the justice of the Almighty, who surely will not permit 
tyrants to prosper forever ; in the realization of this hope they see a 
vindication of their country, a reparation for all she has endured 
through long ages of persecution, a compensation for all she has lost, 
a balm for her wounds, a consolation for the contempt and ignominy 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 183 

to which she has been subjected. We look forward to that day, and 
we believe in its coming as firmly as we believe that to-morrow's sun 
will rise. But why is it so long postponed ? 

" Why still in darkness cloth Erin lie sleeping, 
Why doth the pure light its dawning delay .' " 

It is not for us, short-sighted mortals, to tell_ what are the designs 
of Providence in our regard. But it is easy for us to see how, by 
our own conduct, those designs may be promoted on the one hand, 
or frustrated on the other. We may not always perceive the reward 
of our virtuous actions ; but we cannot fail to sec what obstacles we 
sometimes cast in the waj' of Providence when it is kindly disposed 
towards us, and how frequently our happiness in this world is 
marred by our own fatuity and folly. I shall point out the great 
and noble qualities of the Irish race, on which they may rely for the 
future regeneration of their country ; but I shall also consider it my 
duty to animadvert on the weaknesses in the national conduct and 
character which impede our progress in the path to freedom. To 
those weaknesses I should not think of alluding here, but that unhap- 
pily I find them as strongly ingrained and as pernicious in the 
breasts of Irishmen here as they arc in the old land. 

The lessons addressed to Irishmen at home are equally applicable 
to you ; for you are all of the same stock. You belong to a com- 
mon fatherland — you have the same loves and antipathies — the 
same passions, the same interests. You have an Ireland here which 
you arc building up — you have a character to sustain, and a history 
to respect ; and all that in the teeth of obstacles and difiiculties 
which you understand much better than I do. It is said of religious 
creeds, that one great cause of their clifierences is an ignorance on 
both sides of the real state of the case. We know that to be true 
with regard to our own religion, to which in all ages crimes and 
iniquities have been credited, which it denounces with all the vehem- 
ence of horror and disgust. So is it with the character of Irishmen ; 
they are misunderstood by Englishmen at home, and by Americans 
here. Their vices, and weaknesses, and shortcomings, are pro- 
claimed to the world, as if the denouncers themselves were faultless, 
while their good qualities are never for a moment thought of. Away 
with this Pharisaism — with this contemptible hypocrisy ! Let the 



]84 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

world see the Irishman as he is, and I defy any nationahty under 
heaven to rival him, with his weaknesses, his passions, and his 
vices, no doubt, but with a casket of virtues and noble gifts of soul.. 
With those rare qualities of heart and soul, the Irishman may safely 
despise the contumely of his enemies, and look forwai'd with confi- 
dence to the future freedom of his country as the reward of a long- 
enduring patience, at the bauds of Him who tries even the just uiau 
in the furnace of humiliation. 

Foremost among the noble qualities of the Irish character — 
amongst those qualities which not only entitle our country to the 
respect of the world, but strongly appeal to the retributive justice of 
heaven — is her steadfast attachment "through ages of bondage and 
slaughter " to the Christian Faith since it was planted by Patrick in 
the land. I have no desire, here or elsewhere, on an occasion like 
the present, to depreciate any other religious creed by extolling my 
own ; that is not my object ; I only demand for my fellow-country- 
men that meed of admiration which they deserve for their faithful 
adhesion to a religion in which they sincerely believe, for which 
their ancestors have bled, and for which they would bleed them- 
selves to-day if such a test of their fidelity were needed. In their 
attachment to that religion they were not influenced bj' any worldly 
motive, for all the inducements the world could offer them invited 
them to forswear and abandon it ; in its defence they endured con- 
tempt and ridicule, torture, spoliation, and martyrdom. They 
simply believed, and they sealed their belief with their blood. 
There are some who can see no great valor in all this ; who put it 
down to wild fanaticism, or blind stupid obstinacy ; yet if those 
sacrifices which Irishmen have made had been suffered in the cause 
of any other religion than the Catholic, those woi-ldly philosophers 
would extol their heroism to the skies. What I and is not the 
Catholic religion, even in a worldly point of view, at least as 
respectable as any other religious creed ever propounded to man- 
kind? The question might well raise a smile on the lips of a very 
novice in history, as if all that is great and glorious, not to say 
respectable in the world, had not been preserved to us by the Catho- 
lic Church — ^as if civilization had not been rocked by her in the 
cradle, and nurtured by her up to the full vigor of maturity — as if, 
when the barbarians swept over Europe, demolished the most glori- , 



REV. M. B. BUC^KLEY. Ig5 

ous Avorks of art, extinguished the lamp of science, set aside lands 
and subverted thrones, it were not she, who with the torch of the 
gospel in her hands, startled Europe from her slumbers, re-fashioned 
chaos into shape, regulated societj^ once more, and made science 
and art more triumphant than ever. Has she not ever been the 
true nurse of freedom ? What country enjoyed more freedom than 
Italy previous to the Reformation, Avhen the fine arts were cultiva- 
ted, under the patronage of the Pontifl", and literature flourished in 
the midst of free political institutions? Florence was never so 
magnificent as she was in the Middle Ages, when almost rank with 
affluence, she shone before the world a glorious Catholic democracy. 
Catholic Venice was her rival in those days — her rival in the splen- 
dor of her opulence and the light of her liberty. When was Spain 
so glorious as in the days of their Catholic, Majesties, Ferdinand and 
Isabella — when, amongst that haughty race, the inheritance of the 
Catholic religion was more prized than the purest blood of the 
aristocracy? The respectability, forsooth, of the Catholic religion ! 
Was it not up to the sixteenth century the only religion of the whole 
civilized world? Is it not still the religion of one-third of the whole 
human race ? Is it not to-day the religion of the greatest part of 
Europe, of France and Spain, of Italy and Austria, of Belgium and 
Bavaria, of Hungary and Poland? Is it not spread all over the 
world, flourishing among the mountains of Abj-ssinia and Armenia, 
as among the Alps and Appenines ; by the banks of the Tigris and 
the Gauges, as by those of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi; 
on the shores of Australia, as on the shores of the Brazils ? Is it 
not the religion of the greatest philosophers, poets, orators, humor- 
ists, artists, civilizers, and benefactors of the human race that have 
ever appeared in the world : the religion of the Tertullians, the 
Augustines, the Cyrils, and the Chrysostoms ; the religion of a 
Michael Angelo and a Leonardo da Vinci, of a Ea])hael and a Reu- 
bens, of a Dante and a Petrarch, of a Galileo and a Copernicus, of a 
Cervantes, a Le Sage, and a Rabellais, of a Sir Thomas More, a 
Bossuet, and a Fenelon, of a Columbus, a Pizarro, and a Cortes? 
Traverse the continent of Europe, and what do you see? What is 
everywhere presented to your admiring senses? the old Gothic 
cathedral, the quaint Hotel-de-Ville, the statues in public places, 
the paintings and sculptures in public museums, the thrilling music 



186 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of cathedral choirs? — all called into existence from generation to 
generation by the inspiring and indefectible genius of Catholicism. 
Such is the worldly aspect of that religion which Ireland eml)raced 
fourteen hundred years ago, to which she has ever since adhered 
with unshaken fidelity, for which she has fought and bled through 
ages of persecution unparalleled in the history of unjust legislation ; 
to which she clings to-daj^ with all the tenacity of the olden time, 
the historj' of which is inseparalily interwoven with the history of 
her life, and which, like her own green fields, blooms with equal 
freshness in the rains and storms of jjci'secution as in the pleasant 
sunshine of prosperity and peace. 

But Irishmen are not content to cherish their religion at home ; 
they would extend its blessings as far as possible to the whole 
human race. To what clime or region of the world will you turn 
and not find an Irish priest, that indomitable propagandist of the 
Christian faith ? Plant an Irish family in any region of the globe, 
and you plant with them the seeds of Christianity. This vast con- 
tinent affords the most striking proof of what I say. Within a few 
generations a hierarchy, and clergy, and churches, and Catholic 
communities have sprung up, as if by magic, all over the land. 
But you are more familiar with these facts than I am. Irishmen in 
America, poor and struggling, are never tired of contributing to the 
purposes of religion. Many give their last dollar in the cause of 
charity, and trust to Providence for themselves. They take more 
pride in contemplating a noble structure raised to the glory of the 
Almighty, than they would in regarding a dwelling-place construct- 
ed for their own comfort by the genius of their industry and talent. 
But why do I dwell on the Irishman's attachment to his faith? 
Because you cannot conceive an Irishman without it, and because I 
look upon it as his greatest strength and his most reliable hope for 
the future. The God whom he honors will never abandon him. 

Such unflinching devotion to the noblest cause for which man ever 
suflered may be tested by long and bitter trials ; but in good time a 
grateful God will reward with priceless blessings a fidelity to him 
unparalleled in the history of the human race. 

Another gi-and characteristic of the Irish race, and one surely 
destined to triumi)h in the end, is their intense love of country — 
a love, the like of which is experienced by no peo})le under heaven — 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 187 

a love which is not a mere sentiment, but a cTeep-scated passion, 
interweaving itself with all the businesses of their lives, running 
like a silver thread through all the varied tissue of their thoughts, 
growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength. 
The love of country is a noble passion ; it has inspired the most 
glorious thoughts, words, and deeds that have ever appealed to the 
admiration of mankind ; it has been the theme of poets and orators 
from the earliest ages to the present day. lieligiou, which decries 
most other human passions, applauds, stimulates, and glorifies this. 
He wlio does not feel this generous throbbing in his breast is 
regarded as a craven, a recreant, a poltroon ; but such are rare in 

any country — 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said — 
This is my o^vn, my native land ? " 

The Irishman has peculiar reasons for loving his country. First, 
there is the physical aspect of the land, the " Emerald Isle," so called 
from "the brightest of green" that bedecks its fields. Where in the 
whole world are there such lakes and mountains, such sparkling rivers, 
such smiling valleys, such genial sunshine, such gentle showers? 
And then, each spot has its history — the history of a thousand, per- 
haps two thousand years. Here is the Cromleach, standing still in the 
open field, the altar of a pagan faith, which takes you back to the 
time when the Druids performed their mystic rites, and when Bel 
was the God of the Celt. Each mouldering stone is a chronicle of 
the past ! Here is the Round Tower, whose origin and object are 
lost in the twilight of fable." Here is the ruin of a once formidable 
castle, wrapped in its mantle of ivy, like some " warrior taking his 
rest, with liis martial cloak around him." Here is the still more 
inspiring ruin of some great monastery or church, telling of a day 
when the Christian religion, like a sweet incense, breathed its hal- 
lowed aroma over the hearts and souls of the people, ere the rapa- 
cious greed of a Heni-yhad robbed them of their sacred treasures, or 
the withering hand of a Cromwell had smitten them with desolation 
and decay. Tottering with age, and with the venerable hoar of time 
upon their brows, Nestor-like, those grand old ruins now can only 
tell of the splendor of a by-gone time : — 

" Each ivied arch and turret lone, 
Plead haughtily for glories gone." 



188 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Besides the physical aspect of the land, there is the long list of 
traditions, descending from one generation to another — traditions in 
•which truth and romance are strangely blended together, and affect 
with pleasure the minds of a lively and imaginative people. There 
are the Fairy tales, the delight of infancy and the superstitious faith 
of maturer years. Tales of the Banshee and the Jack o' the Lantern, 
the Pooka and the Lcprehaun ; and marvellous ghost stories of 
haunted houses and underground caves, which, narrated some winter 
night by the blazing hearth, by some venerable raconteur, make the 
blood to tingle in the veins with terror, and call iij) before tlic exci- 
ted vision the dread forms of troublous spirits that still walk the 
earth. This love of country beats more warmly in the breast of the 
exile than it does in the bosom of the resident ; for '' absence makes 
the heart grow fonder," and imagination is the most deceptive of all 
painters. The exile is ever picturing to his mind's eye those charms 
from which he is separated, and in which he may never rejoice again. 
Before his eyes beam, with ever-increasing brightness, those green 
fields of his native land — the hill and vale — the wood and stream 
— the roads and lanes ever familiar to his memory, through Avhich 
he sported when a boy. He still hears in ftincy the wild song of the 
thrush, and the blackbird, and the linnet; he stands beneath the 
cromleach and the cabin, the shattered castle and the crumbling 
church : nay more, he recalls, on the canvas of a glowing memory, 
the festive scenes in which ho so often shared in that land of such 
mysterious charms. He sees the joyous gatherings at the wedding 
feast, the plentiful board, and the smiling faces of the "neighbors," 
that have flocked to the scene from miles around, he hears the gay 
music of the flute, the fiddle, and the bagpipe, and his feet beat sym- 
pathetic to the boys and girls treading some lively measure — a jig 
or a reel — on the resounding floor. He thinks of the fair and the 
race-course ; of Donuybi-ook and Punchestown ; of the hurling match 
between some rival parishes ; the wild " tally-ho " of the huntsmen, 
as they flash, like a scarlet meteor, through the air, in full pursuit of 
unhappy Keynard : he thinks of the hospitality and generosity of his 
countrymen, which have passed into a proverb ; but what touches 
him most of all, he thinks of the long centuries through which, by an 
iniquitous code of laws, more base and barbarous than if they were 
devised by demons, the heai-ts of a people so warm, so generous, and 



REV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 189 

SO brave, so open to pleasure, so accessible to mirth, have been 
crushed and ground down ; — by which he himself, and millions of 
his race, have been forced to quit forever the land of their birth — 
the land they loved so well, and to be content with the memories of 
the Green Isle, whose enchanting realities they may never behold 
again. Will such a love as this be frustrated forever of its noble 
aspirations? Xo ; for, after the love of God, the holiest passion of 
the soul is a love of country ; and the Power that nerved the arm of 
David in his conflict with the Philistine, and that inspired the valor 
of the, Machabees against the enemies of their country, will yet 
restore to the yearnings of Irishmen the land whose freedom would 
be to them the most priceless earthly boon that even Heaven could 
bestow. 

But are Irishmen capable of self-government ? Two things seem 
necessary for this capability, namely, the head to govern, and the 
strong arm to control — intellectual and physical vigor. And who 
will deny those attributes to Irishmen ? Take intellect. In what 
department of intellect have Irishmen not excelled ? In the Senate 
we have had a Grattan, a Flood, a Burke, and a Sheridan. At the 
Bar we have had a Curran, and a Plunket, an O'Connell, and a Shiel. 
In the field we can boast of an Owen Roe O'lsTeill, a Sarsfield, and a 
Duke of Wellington. AYere we able to disentomb the great men of 
the buried past, how many sage Brehons, lawgivers of the land, 
could we bring to light, as I showed you in my last Lecture? How 
many bards and poets of the very first genius, before whom even our 
boasted Swift, Goldsmith, and Moore would "pale their ineffectual 
fires?" At the present day, all over the world, there appears to 
prevail only a decent mediocrity of intellect in every department ; by 
the wide diffusion of learning it does not seem to abound in any par- 
ticular quarter ; few men of genius or talent stand prominently for- 
ward anywhere, yet wherever intellect or genius flourishes, there is 
the Irishman ever with his stout shoulder to the wheel, toiling in the 
fields of literature, editing newspapers and periodicals, excelling in 
the fine arts, in painting, music, and sculpture ; filling high offices 
in the State, capable of holding and adorning any position with 
which he may be entrusted. But, indeed, here I labor in vain, for 
no one has ever disputed the intellectual calibre of Ireland as com- 
pared with other nations ; and it is needless for me to proclaim it. 



190 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Equally unnecessary is it for me to dwell on the courage, the 
bravery, the chivalry of my fellow-countrymen. Many a hard- 
fought field on the Continent of Europe and the Continent of 
America can testify to the valor and pluck of the Irish soldier, 
There is something almost ludicrous in the eagerness with which an 
Irishman longs to be in the thick of a fight. Like the war-horse in 
Job, " he smclleth the battle afar ofi", and he crieth ha ! ha ! " 
Wherever fighting is to be done there is the irrepressible Patrick. 
Namur is familiar with his great war-cry. The Adige and Ci'cmona 
have witnessed the strength of his arm. Blenheim remembers Lord 
Clare's Dragoons : the deeds of the Irish Brigade at Ramillics and 
Fontenoy we repeat like a pater-noster. The olive-groves of Spain 
have drunk the young blood of the Irish soldier. In the republics 
of Chili, Bolivia, and Venezuela, the praises of O'Brien, Dillon. 
Devereux, and other Irish patriots, are j^et sung in the soft Castilian 
tongue by the banks of the Orinoco and the mountain fastnesses of 
the Andes. What shall I say to the exploits of my fellow-country- 
men in your late civil war ! T^et Bull Run and the Rappa- 
hannock speak. Let Gain's Hill and Malvern Hill, and An tietam, 
and numerous other scenes of warfare speak, and tell if the children 
of Hibernia turned their backs upon their foe. By the banks of the 
Enxine and beneath the shadows of the Himalayas, in the Crimea 
and in India, Irishmen have won the laurels of the brave. They 
fought for the Father of their Church at Spoleto and Ancona. At 
the present moment the proudest, the most unblemished, the most 
martial name amongst the legions of Europe is Patrick IMacMahon, 
inheritor of all the dignity and chivalry of a warlike ancestry, while 
thousands of his race, animated by the same martial instincts as his 
own, flock from the Green Isle to swell the ranks of struggling 
France, and throw the balance of their strength and valor against the 
cruel and rapacious Teuton. 

I have mentioned the name of Richard Lalor Shiel. Once in the 
House of Lords, Lord Lyndhurst had the audacity to say that the 
Irish were not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen, be- 
cause they were "aliens;" "aliens," said he, "in race — aliens in 
country — aliens in religion." "Aliens! " cried Shiel, in his place 
in the House of Commons, "Good God, was Arthur, Duke of 
Wellington, in the House of Lords, and did he not start up and 



REV. M B. BUCKLEY. 19^ 

exclaim, 'Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty.' The 
Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His 
mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved ; but, notwithstand- 
ing his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that when he heard 
his Eoman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) desig- 
nated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his 
eloquent adversary could supply, — I cannot help thinking that he 
ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have 
been contributors to his renown. The battles, fortunes, sieges, that 
he has passed ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have 
remembered that from the earliest achievement, in which he dis- 
played that military genius which has placed him foremost in the 
annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat 
which has made his name imprrishalile — from Assaye to Waterloo 
— the Irish soldiers, with wiiom your armies are filled, were the in- 
separable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled suc- 
cesses have been crowned. Whose were the armies that drove your 
bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the 
shock of war before ? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and 
filled the moats at Badajos ? All his victories should have rushed 
and crowded back ui^on his memory; — Vimiera, Badajos, Sala- 
manca, Albuera, Toulouse, and last of all, the greatest ! Tell me, 
for you were there — I appeal to the gallant soldier befoi'e me [Sir 
Henry Hardinge], from whose opinions I difler, but who beai's, I 
know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast ; tell me, for you must 
needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were 
trembling in the balance — while death fell in showers — when the 
artillery of France was levelled with the precision of the most deadly 
science — when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the 
example of her mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset — 
tell me, if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be 
lost, the 'aliens ' blenched? And when at length the moment for 
the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valor which had 
so long been wisely checked was at last let loose — when, with words 
familiar, but immortal, the great ca[)tain commanded the great as- 
sault — tell me if Catholic Ireland, with less heroic valor than the 
natives of this your own glorious country, precipitated herself upon 
the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and Ireland flowed in 



192 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the same stream and drenched the same field. When the chill morn- 
ing dawned — when the dead lay cold and stark together — in tlie 
same deep pit their bodies were deposited ; the green corn of Spring 
is now breaking from their commingled dust ; the dew falls from 
Heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in 
the glory shall we not be permitted to participate, and shall we be 
told as a requital that we are estranged from the noble country, for 
whose salvation our life-blood has been poured out ? " 

If ever the fi'eedom of Ireland must be won liy a disciplined Irish 
soldiery, we, at least, need have no fear for the result. 

The foults and weaknesses of the Irish character are less, perhaps, 
thau those of any nation under the sun, and yet there are few people 
anywhere who are so heartily aliused as the Irish. Thus we hear 
of the dirty, lazy Irish, tlie landlord-shooting Irish, the drunken 
Irish, and so on. Such is the hatred existing against our race in tlie 
breasts of some strangers, that, as you are aware, the familiar 
appendage, "No Irish need apply," is usually tacked on to the adver- 
tisements concerning vacant situations. Now, how far are these 
charges well founded? Are the Irish really dirtier, lazier, more 
murderous, more' drunken than the people of other countries ? With 
regard to the bad habits of the Irish, it must never be foi'gotten that 
they were constantly debarred from the advantages which other 
people have enjoyed. For centuries they were starved, oppressed, 
persecuted, slain. To people living in perpetual serfdom and 
dread, the decencies and refinements of life were of no considera- 
tion. For other centuries, by a hellish code of laws, they were de- 
prived of education ; they wei'c Ijrought up in stolid, blank ignorance. 
How, I ask, could a people thus brought to the level of the brute, 
be expected to keep up in the race with other nationalities, to whom 
every educational privilege was freely and lavishly extended? 
Things, no doubt, have changed, and the light of learning is again 
permitted to dawn upon the land ; but a child is not educated in a 
few years, nor a country in a few generations. The Irish are by^ 
nature proud, sensitive, passionate, and these are dispositions which 
by neglect of culture fructify in evil deeds, but in reality they are 
noble instincts, which, tempered by a wise and careful training, lead 
to the grandest, the noblest results. No nation in history has ever 
won respect that was not sensitive to insult, proud in the conscious- 



REV. M B. BUCKLEY. ;193 

ness of its own dignity, and passionate to avenge its wounded 
honor. 

But let us examine and hrietiy detail those charges against the 
Irish. They are accused of dirt. Remeniher, I repeat, that for 
centuries the Irish, especially in the rural districts, have been kept 
in the most extreme poverty, barely able to subsist, while their toil 
and their sweat went to support in indolence and ease the landlords 
who ground their faces. It is hard for poverty and cleanliness to 
abide together. The tine lady, whose person is a model of neatness, 
and who has many servants to set her house in order, can preach 
valuable lessons to the dirty poor, and modestly enforce her precept 
by her own admirable example. But, after all, it is not very easy 
to be clean when you live on a mud floor. It is, no doubt, desirable 
that the poor should struggle against this bad habit of dirt, just as 
it is desirable that we, who have got over it, should struggle against 
other bad habits to which we are addicted. It is, to be sure, painful 
to see poor people neglect the little means by which they may suc- 
ceed in making their houses decent and comfortable. But let us not 
judge harshly. Habits engendered through a long time are not got 
rid of in an hour, probably not in a generation. Indeed, to the 
poor and naked, dirt is a kind of protection against cold, and it 
demands some resolution on the part of those who are chill and 
hungry to get rid of it. When it comes to a question between soap 
and bread, I fancy the stomach will carry the day. But remove the 
Irish from home, give them fair play, set them an example of clean- 
liness, and what is the result? Why, I should like to know, who 
do all the cleanliness in American houses ? Is it not the girls of 
Ireland? Who presents to your admiring vision the immaculate 
door-step as you enter the house? The Irish girl, who makes the 
brass-plate to shine and the bell-handle to glisten ! The Irish girl, 
■who has " fixed " the lovely drawing-i-oom, and swept from the mir- 
ror the last atom of dust that could prevent you from admiring your 
handsome features. Who has arranged the dinner-table so daintily, 
and as you sit to dinner, who helps you with so much grace and 
elegance of manner? The Irish girl, who, perhaps, last year, was 
obliged by poverty's unconquerable necessity to move about without 
shoe or stocking on the wet mud floor of her native cabin in op- 
pressed, misgoverned Ireland. And are the Irish lazy ? I should 



194 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

like to know what a lazy Irishman would want in America. How 
many dollars a day would he earn with his liiuid.sin his pocket? Are 
thej' lazy Irishmen who carry on all the great works in this great 
country, who work in your factories, who delve in your mines, who 
build your cities? I have heard of your Erie Canal, an excavation 
five hundred miles long, cut through rocks and mountains, opening 
a passage for mighty waters, strewing a new path for the beneficent 
progress of commerce. .It was designed by Irish brains and carried 
by Irish hands. Who make your railways? Who, in the face of 
relentless pestilence, cut through the Isthmus of Panama? Who, 
surrounded by truculent savages, made the great Pacific Railroad 
from the shores of the Atlantic to the distant California? The lazy 
Irish. But this absurd charge need not be dwelt on seriously, as I 
believe few are found to make it in a serious spirit. 

The Irish are accused of being murderers, and no doubt a great 
number of murders have been committed in Ireland, and in many 
instances the perpetrators have escaped the vengeance of the law. 
Now, no one can defend a murder, because it is a gross and direct 
violation of one of God's most solemn commands. It is a terril)le 
thing to take in cold blood the life of a fellow-man, and to send him 
before his great Judge with all his imperfections on his head. But 
is murder more common in Ireland than elsewhere? Surely not. 
Per'haps there is no country in t!ie world whei'c murder is so common 
as England. There we every day hear of a father murdering his wife 
and children, and then destroying his own life, or it is the mother who 
performs this unnatui'al and wholesale crime. Child-murder is com- 
mitted so frequently, that, a few years ago. Dr. Lankester, one of 
the coroners for the Middlesex district, stated that he held one in- 
quest on a murdered child, on an average, every day in the year. In 
every country, owing to the weakness of human nature and the 
strength of human passion, a certain number of murders will be 
committed. In Ireland the excess of this normal average consists 
of agrarian murders, murders of landlords, and what is the cause of 
this? Why are landlords more obnoxious than other members 
of the community? I need scarcely tell you, for you know it ; but 
I will remind you. In Ireland, since the passing of the penal laws, 
the farmer was regarded as a serf, a slave, as one whose existence is 
barely tolerated, who should work and toil all the days of his life. 



REV. M. B. IIUCKLEY. 195 

and be content with the mere blessing of existence. Ills condition 
improved since the passing of Catholic Emancipation. An ontrage 
could not be committed upon him with quite so much impunity as 
before ; but he was still a serf in the true sense of the word ; he 
worked with the sweat of his brow on the farm whereon he was 
born, and on which his fixther and grandfather had been born before 
him. The landlord imposed whatever rent he pleased ; If the farm 
was improved by the farmer's industry, up went the rent. At length 
it grew so high that the farmer could not pay ; the times grew bad, 
labor became too dear. Other evils conspired against the unfortu- 
nate occupier. He was served with a notice to quit ; he borrowed, 
begged, and paid, and procured a respite. But at length the day of 
reckoning came again. He was not able to meet the demands of his 
rapacious landlord. Then came the crow-bar ; the house was razed 
to the ground, and the poor, struggling, honest, hard-working, 
broken-hearted man was cast naked on the world. His famished 
children walked before, his squalid wife clung to his side, and had 
no word of consolation. They gazed their last on the old familiar 
homestead, on the fields with which all the huml)le joys of their 
lives were associated ; on the trees whose trembling leaves had so 
often made sweet music to their ears. Now they are alone, homeless, 
and friendless, and penniless, on the face of the bleak, cold world. 
The law of the land, instead of protecting them, cries out to the 
landlord, "You have done your duty." What? and may this 
pampered minion trample on God's creatures, and no feeling of 
' resentment spring up in the breast of the outraged victim ? Is it no 
murder for the purse-proud landlord to drive to starvation and death 
hundreds of his fellow-beings, whose only crime is that they do not 
labor more than that God has given them power to do ? Does he 
not kill them as effectually as if he severed their throats from ear to 
ear? And is he to escape the obloqu}^ of mankind and the penalty 
of the law ? The unhappy being whom he has driven from his home 
goes his way brooding over the wrong — the cruel wrong that has 
been visited upon himself, and the wife and children of his bosom. 
The crushed worm will turn on the heel th:it tramples it. Who can 
be surprised that the demon of hatred and revenge takes possession 
of his maddened brain ; that he seeks for an instrument of destruc- 
tion, and wreaks upon the monster who provoked him, " the wild 



196 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

justice of revenge?" You, who live iu peace aud plenty, protected 
by just and beneficent laws, free and independent, do not condemn 
too rashly or too bitterly the wretch from whose mouth bread has 
thus been wantonly snatched, and whose innocent children and 
loving wife have thus been doomed to starve before his ej^es, nor 
blame too severely those who consijire to defraud the law of its 
revenge on the murderer. .The law in Ireland has never been the 
friend of the peof)le. On the contrary, it has mui'dered them by 
thousands and tens of thousands. I speak not of the legal murders 
committed during the bloody sway of the penal code. I speak of 
"what has happened in our own recollection. In the famine years, 
when the poor starving peasants were not able to pay their rent, the 
law permitted the landlords to drive them out of the country, to 
crowd them on board fever ships, and banish them across the wide 
Atlantic. The bones of those wretched exiles lie in myriads beneath 
huge, shaj^eless mounds on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in Mon- 
ti'eal, and Quebec, and on the shores of New Brunswick. This was 
all done by law. And will any one turn round and say the Irish 
should respect the law? "Philosophy is a very good horse in the 
stable, but an arrant jade upon a journey." Put j'^ourself in the 
place of the Irish peasant, whom his landlord has brought to ruin, 
and tell me will you have more patience than he ? In this countr^s 
if a man outrages your wife, and you shoot him dead in the public 
streets, it will be hard to get a jury that will find you guilty of wilful 
murder. And which is the less provocative crime ? To destroy the 
character of a woman, or to put to a slow and painful death an 
unoffending father and his offspring? The Irish peasants, therefore, 
are no more murderers than the peasantry of any other country ; 
they have committed murders in some districts, under pressure of 
the most exciting provocation. As a rule, even in the much maligned 
Tipperary, the Irish peasant possesses every virtue that could adorn 
mankind, mingled with a softness akin to that for which the gentler 
sex is distingished : — 

" Tall is his form, his heart is warm, 
His spirit light as any fairy, 
Ilis wrath is fearful as the storm 
That sweeps the hills of Tipperary. 



KEV. M. B. BUCKLEY. 197 

" Lead him to fight for fatherland ; 
His is no courage cold and wary. 
The troops live not ou earth could stand 
The headlong charge of Tipperary. 

"But meet him in his cabin rude, 

Or dancing with his dark-haired Mary, 
You'd swear they knew no other mood 
Than mirth and love in Tipperary." 

We now come to that feature of the Irish character which has been 
so seriously commented on all over the world — I mean a passion for 
intoxicating drinks. And I must confess that here indeed is cause 
of just complaint against us. I do not admit that the Irish are more 
addicted to drunkenness than their neighbors ; I can produce no 
statistics on the point. But it cannot be denied that our people are 
deplorably prone to habits of iutoxication, and that, in fact, this vice 
is the great bar to their prosperity in the world, and to the respect 
which they would win amongst their fellow-men in foreign countries 
where they dwell. We must stare the ugly foot in the face. Drunk- 
enness is on the increase in Ireland, it is spreading amongst the 
women as well as the men. To what extent it exists here you can 
best judge. But of its sad effects no man can form a just estimate : 
it debases the dignity of our nature, it paralyzes the intellect, it 
extinguishes the reason, it unnerves the arm of labor, it brings 
poverty, disgrace, disease and death, not only on the offender, but 
on those who depend upon him for life and all its legitimate enjoy- 
ments. I do lielicve that, if the Irish race were only sober, there 
is no earth]}' difBculty they could not vanquish, there is no honor 
they might not attain, no amount of respect they might not conciliate. 
But as long as this blot exists on the national character, we must be 
content to be pitied and despised by the more prudent and temperate 
portion of mankind. 

The only other serious weakness of the Irish character that I 
can discern, and one which, though not so debasing as druulien- 
ness, is yet equally disastrous to our national honor and progress, 
is that spirit of dissensiou which exists among Irishmen. This 
spirit is not of recent growth, it seems to have been at all times 
inherent in the national character. It is said that every man is 
born with the seeds of some disease in his system, which slowly 
germinate, and finally produce his death, unless accident interpose 



198 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to efl'ect that o))ject. This niuhidy is said to be his congenital 
disease. It ajipears to me that disunion is the congenital disease 
of Irishmen. Ireland, no doubt, is composed of various and con- 
flicting elements of population ; it has its Protestants and Catholics, 
its Celts and Anglo-Saxons, the dominant and the subjugated races ; 
and it is not unnatural that those conflicting elements should some- 
times sound a discordant note. But what is really to be deplored 
is that spirit of dissension that exists among parties whose inter- 
ests are identical. On every public occasion where the interests 
of the country are at stake, we find the popular party alwa3S 
split up among themselves. Hence, the bitterest feelings are 
aroused, life-long enmities are created, and the national cause re- 
mains at the same eternal stand-still. Now, perhaps, what is 
more extraordinary still is, that those seeds of congenital disease 
in the national character appear to flourish and develop themselves 
in a foreign clime even more vigorously than on their native soil, 
although the class who emigrate are, for the most part, the mass 
of the people who are Celtic, Catholic, and English-hating to the 
back-boue. If Irishmen ever united, it surely ought to be in this 
country, where they have only one great common interest — to es- 
tablish a Celtic, Christian, free Ireland, which they are debarred 
from establishing at home. And yet, what is the fact? I learned it 
with surprise, I perceive it with shame, I denounce it with indigna- 
tion, — even here, Irishmen have their dislikes, their prejudices, 
their jealousies, their clannish antipathies, their vocabulary of abuse 
against each other. I was not long in America when I became aware 
of the existence of this feeling amongst my fellow-countrymen. I 
refused to believe it, but I have now travelled, and mixed too much 
amongst them to hoodwink the fact. It confounds, distresses, and 
humiliates me. I found that amongst a section of my countrymen 
who happen to be born in what is called the Xorth, — as if, at this 
distance, the cardinal points of our little island were a matter of any 
great importance, — the province, and particularly the county from 
which I hail, were regarded with contempt. I should like to know 
what the poor county of Cork has done that it should be regarded 
with contempt. I believe our accent is remarkably Irish. Would 
it be more respectable if it were English or Scotch ? And is it so 
great a stiema on an Irishman to have an Irish accent? I wish some- 



REV. M. U. BUCKLEY. 299 

body would tell me what is the contemptible point of a Corkman's 
character, that I might honestly grapple with it, and see what it is 
worth. Have we not produced as many great men as any other 
Irish county? If I am not mistaken, we have added to the catalogue 
of Irish greatness the name of Edmund Burke, one of the greatest 
statesmen, philosophers, and orators the world has ever seen. We 
claim the nativity of John P. Curran. William Penn, the founder 
of Pennsylvania, was born in the county of Cork. The Sheares, 
brothers, who perished on the scaffold for the cause of their country, 
were born in the suburbs of Cork city. The celebrated Arthur 
O'Leary was a Corkman ; so was James Barry, the painter ; so was 
Maclise, one of the greatest painters of modern times. Thomas 
Davis, the poet, was born in Mallow, in the county of Cork. Father 
Prout was a native of Cork city. These names occur to me by ac- 
cident. I could find many more, were I to search, but they are 
sufficient to show that, in the ranks of intellect, we Corkmen have 
noticing to be ashamed of. In any popular outburst of patriotism, 
is Cork behind-hand ? What then is wrong with us ? Are we not 
as good-looking as if we were raised in Sligo or Donegal ? Do we 
not spend our money as freely as you do in xintrim or Tyrone ? 
Are we not as well educated? But why do I dwell on this point? 
To show you that, instead of tweaking your noses at any county, 
you should be proud of them all, as part of that dear old land which 
has produced so many great and noble men. I need not tell 3^ou 
that these feelings of mutual antipathy are never dreamt of at home. 
Let there be an end of them here, for surely they are not the in- 
spiration of the Angel of Peace. 

And now I have done. I have pointed out what I consider the 
good and the weak points of our national character — what should 
excite our pride, and what should suffuse our cheeks with shame. 
In this latter part of my analysis, I have acted with a boldness for 
which I entreat your indulgence. Men do not like to be reminded 
of their faults, and we Irish have been treated too frequently to un- 
qualified praise. For my part, I love the truth, and I should con- 
sider myself the veriest coward and dissembler if I came here to 
analyze your character, and did not point out your faults. Every 
day's experience proves to me that you are a great and a noble people ; 
that you are doing more for the promotion of Christianity, and con- 



200 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

sequent civilization, and for the dignity of manhood, than any nation 
on the face of the earth : and one of the noblest fcatnres of your char- 
acter, which I have not touclied (for I could not touch them all), is 
the lofty indifference with which you treat the view with which other 
nationalities regard you — you proceed in the proud consciousness 
that you are doing what is just and right, and you must triumph in 
the end. But, if you love the God who made you, and would secure 
His blessing — if you value the approval of a good conscience — if 
you prize the esteem of all good men — if you would secure success 
in the race for the world's legitimate enjoyments, study the virtue of 
temperance, and, instead of disparaging each other, pull together; 
union is strength — your enemies will not help you in the road to 
success — they rather rejoice in your discord as their best ally 
against you. On j'oui'selves alone you must rely, whether toiling in 
solitude or mingling in the hum and shock of men : — ■ 

" Then flung alone, or hand in hand, 

In mirthful hour, or spirit solemn, 
In lowly toil, or high command, 

In social hall, or charging column; 
In tempting wealth and trying woe, 

In struggling with a mob's dictation, 
In bearing back a foreign foe. 

In training up a troubled nation; 
Still hold to truth, abound in love, 

Refusing every base compliance, 
Your praise within, your prize above, 

And live and die in self-reliance." 




ANSWERS 

TO FROUDE, THE ENGLISH HISTORIAN, 

BY 

Rev. Thomas N, Burke. 

[ 201 ] 




FATHER BURKE. 



First Lecture, 

Delivered est the Academy of Music, New York, Noveiviber 
12, 1872. 



^ADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — It is a strange fact that the 
^^M old battle, which has been raging for seven hundred years, 
1^ should continue so far away fi'om the old land. The question 
■L on which I am come to speak to you this evening is one that 

has been disputed at many a council board, one that has been disputed 
in many a parliament, one that has been disputed on many a well- 
fought field, aud is not yet decided — the question between England 
and Ireland. Amongst the visitors to America who came over this 
year there was one gentleman distinguished in Europe for his style 
of writing and for his historical knowledge, the author of several 
works which have created a profound sensation, at least for their 
originality. Mr. Froude has frankly stated that he came over to this 
countrj' to deal with the English and with the Irish c|uestiou, viewing 
it from the English standpoint ; that, like a true man, he came to 
America to make the best case that he could for his own country ; 
that he came to state that case to an American public as to a grand 
jury, and to demand a verdict from them the most extraordinary that 
was ever yet demanded from any people — namely, the declaration 
that England was right in the manner in which she has treated my 
native land for seven hundred years. It seems, according to this 
learned gentleman, that we Irish have been badly treated ; that he 
confesses, but he put in as a plea (hat we onhj got ivhat we deserved. 
It is true, he says, that we have governed them badly; the reason is, 
because it was impossible to govern them rightly. It is true that we 
have robbed them ; the reason is, because it was a j^ity to leave them 

(2a5) 



204 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tJieir own, they iwtdc such a bad use of it. It is true we have perse- 
cuted them ; the reason is, persecution was a fashion of the time and 
the order of the day. On those pleas there is not a criminal in prison 
to-day in the United States that sliould not instantly get his freedom 
by acknowledging his crime and pleading some extenuating circum- 
stance. Our ideas about Ireland have been all wrong, it seems. 
Seven hundred years ago the exigencies of the time demanded the 
foundation of a strong British empire ; in order to do this, Ireland 
had to be conquered, and Ireland was conquered. Since that time 
the one ruling idea in the English mind has been to do all the good 
that they could for the Irish. Their legislation and their action has 
not alwaj's been tender, but it has been always beneficent. They 
sometimes were severe ; 1)ut they were severe to us for our own 
good, and the difficulty of England has been the Irish during these 
long hundreds of years : they never understood their own interests or 
knew what was for their own good. Now, the American mind is 
enlightened, and henceforth no Irishman must complain of the past 
in this new light in which IMr. Fronde puts it before us. Now, the 
amiable gentlemen tells us, what has been our fate in the past he 
greatly fcai"s we must reconcile ourselves to in the future. He comes 
to tell us his version of the history of Ireland, and also to solve Ire- 
land's difEculty, and to lead us out of all the miseries that have been 
our lot for hundreds of years. When he came, many persons ques- 
tioned what was the motive or the reason of his coming. I have 
heard people speaking all round me, and assigning to the learned 
gentleman this motive or that. Some people said he was an emis- 
sary of the English government, that they sent him hei-e because they 
were beginning to be afraid of the rising power of Ireland in this 
great nation ; that they saw here eight millions of Irishmen by birth, 
and i^erhaps fourteen millions by descent ; and that they knew 
enough of the Irish to realize that the Almighty God blessed them 
alwaj's with an extraordinary power, not only to preserve them- 
selves, but to spread themselves, until in a few years not fourteen, 
but fifty millions of descendants of Irish blood and of Irish race will 
be in this land. According to those who thus surmise, England 
wants to check the sympathy of the American people for their Irish 
fellow-citizens ; and it was considered that the best way to effect this 
was to send a learned man with a plausible story to this country, a 



FATHER BURKE. 205 

man with a singular power of viewing facts in the light which he 
wishes himself to view them and put them before others, a man with 
the extraordinary power of so mixing np these facts that many 
simple-minded people will look upon them as he puts them before 
them as true, and whose mission it was to alienate the mind of 
America from Ireland to-day by showing what an impracticable, 
obstinate, accursed race we are. 

Others, again, surmise that the learned gentleman came for another 
purpose. They said, England is in the hour of her weakness ; she is 
tottering fast and visibly to her ruin ; the disruption of that old 
empire is visibly approaching ; she is to-day cast off without an ally 
in Europe, her army a cipher, her fleet nothing — according to Mr. 
Eeade, a great authority on this question — nothing to be compared 
to the rival fleet of the great Russian power now growing up. When 
France was pai'alyzed li}^ her late defeat, England lost her best ally. 
The three emperors, in their meeting the other day, contemptuously 
ignored her, and they settled the affairs of the world without as much 
as mentioning the name of that kingdom, which was once so power- 
ful. Her resources of coal and iron are fiiiling, her people are dis- 
contented, and she is showing every sign of decay. Thus did some 
people argue that England was anxious for an American alliance ; 
for, they said, " What would be more natural than that the old tot- 
tering emjiire should seek to lean on the strong, mighty, vigorous 
young arm of America ? " 

I have heard others say that the gentleman came over to this 
country on the invitation of a little clique of sectarian bigots in this 
country. Men who, feeling that the night of religious bigotry and 
sectarian bitterness is fast coming to a close before the increasing 
light of American intelligence and education, would fain prolong the 
darkness for an hour or two by whatever help Mr. Froude could 
lend them. 

But I protest to you, gentlemen, here to-night that I have heard all 
these motives assigned to this learned man without giving them the 
least attention. I believe Mr. Froude's motives to be simple, 
straightforward, honorable and patriotic. I am willing to give him 
credit for the highest motives, and I consider him perfectly incapable 
of lending himself to any base or soi'did proceedings from a base or 
sordid motive. But as the learned gentleman's motives have been so 



206 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

freely canvassed and criticised, and, I believe, indeed, in many cases 
misinterpreted, so my own motives in coming here to-night may be 
perhaps also misinterpreted and misunderstood, unless I state them, 
clearly and plainly. As he is said to come as an emissary of the 
English Government, so I may be said, perhaps, to appear as an 
emissary of rebellion or of revolution. As he is supposed by some to 
have the sinister motive of alienating the American mind from the 
Irish citizenship of the States, so I may be suspected of endeavoring 
to excite religious or political hatred. 

Now, I protest these are not my motives ; I come here to-night 
simply to vindicate the honor of Ireland in her history. I come here 
to-night lest any man should think that in this our da}'^, or in any 
day, Ireland is to be left without a son, who will speak for the mother 
that bore him. 

And first of all I hold that Mr. Froude is unfit for the task he has 
undertaken for three great reasons : First, because I find in the writings 
of this learned gentleman that he solemnly and empiiatically declares 
that he despairs of ever finding a remedy for Ireland, and he gives it 
up as a bad job. Here are the words, written in one of his essays 
a few years ago : " The present hope," he says, "is that by assiduous 
justice " (that is to say, by conceding everything that the Irish please 
to ask) " we shall disarm that enmity, and convince them of our 
good will." It may be so ; there are persons sanguine enough to 
hope that the Irish will be so moderate in what they demand, and 
the English so liberal in what they grant, that at last we shall fling 
ourselves into each other's arms in tears of mutual forgiveness. I do 
not share that expectation ; it is more likely they will pxish their 
importunities until at last we turn upon them and refuse to yield 
further. And there will be a struggle once moi-e ; and either emi- 
gration to America will increase in volume until it has carried the 
entire race beyond our reach, or in some shape or other the}' will 
again have to be coerced into submission. "Banish them or coerce 
them" : there is the true English speech. "My only remedy," he 
emphatically says, "my only hope, my only prospect for the future 
for Ireland is, let them all go to America ; have done with the race ; 
give to them a land at least that we have endeavored to make for 
seven hundred years a deseil and a solitude ; or, if they remain at 
home, they will have to be coerced into submission." I hold that 



FATHER BURKE. 207 

that man has no right to come to America to tell the American people 
and the Irish in America that he cannot describe the horoscope of 
Ireland's future. He ought to be ashamed to attempt it after having 
uttered such words. 

The second reason why I say he is unfit for the task of describing 
Irish history is because of his contempt for the Irish people. The 
original sin of the Englishman has ever been his contempt for the 
Irish. It lies deep, though dormant, in the heart of almost every 
Englishman. The average Englishman despises the Irishman, looks 
down upon him as a being almost inferior in nature. Now, I speak 
not from prejudice, but from an intercourse of years, for I have 
lived amongst them. I have known Englishmen, amiable and 
generous themselves, charming characters, who would not for the 
whole world nourish wilfully a feeling of contempt in their hearts 
for any one, much less to express it in words ; yet I have seen them 
manifest in a thousand forms that contempt for the Irish which 
seems to be their very nature. I am sorry to say that I cannot 
make any exception amongst the Protestants and Catholics of Eng- 
land in this feeling. I mention this not to excite animositjs or to 
create bad blood or bitter feeling — no, I protest this is not my 
meaning ; but I mention this beeause I am convinced it lies at the 
very root of this antipathy and of that hatred between the English 
and Irish, which seems to be incurable, and I verily believe that 
until that feeling is destro3'ed you never can have cordial union 
between these two countries, and the only way to destroy it is by 
so raising Ireland through justice and by home legislation that she 
will attain such a position that she will command and enforce the 
respect of her English fellow-subjects. Mr. Froude himself, who, 
I am sure, is incapable of any ungenerous sentiment toward any 
man or any people, is an actual living example of that feeling of 
contempt of which I speak. In November, 1856, this leai'ned 
gentleman addressed a Scottish assembly in Edinburgh. The sub- 
ject of his address was, "The Etfect of the Protestant Eeformation 
upon Scottish Character." According to him, it made the Scotch 
the finest people on the face of the earth. Oi'iginally fine, they 
never got their last touch that made them, as it wei'e, archangels 
amongst men, until the holy hand of John Knox touched them. 
On that occasion the learned srentlemau introduced himself to his 



208 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Scottish audience in the following words : " I have undertaken," he 
says, " to speak this evening on the efi'ects of the Reformation in 
Scotland, and I consider myself a very bold person to have come 
here on any such undertaking. In the first place, the subject is one 
with Avhich it is presumptuous for a stranger to meddle. Great 
national movements can only be understood properly by the people 
•whose disposition they represent. We see ourselves by our own 
history that Englishmen only can properly comprehend it. It is 
the same with every considerable nation that works out their own 
political and spiritual lives through tempers, humors, and passions 
peculiar to themselves, and the same disposition which produces the 
result is required to interpret it afterwards." Did the learned 
gentleman ofler any such apology for entering so boldly upon the 
discussion of Irish aifairs ? Oh ! no ; there was no apology neces- 
sary ; he was only going to speak of (he mere Irish. There was no 
■word to express his own fears that, periiaps, he did not understand 
the Irish character or the subject upon which he was al)0ut to treat ; 
there was no apology to the Irish in America — the fourteen mil- 
lions — if he so boldly was to take up their history, endeavoring to 
bold them up as a licentious, immoral, irreligious, contemptuous, 
obstinate, unconquerable race; not at all! It was not necessary; 
they were only Irish. If they were Scottish, then the learned 
gentleman would have come with a thousand apologies for his own 
presumption in venturing to approach such a delicate subject as the 
delineation of the sweet Scottish character, or anything connected 
with it. What, on the other hand, is his treatment of the Irish? I 
have — in this book before me — I have words that came from his 
pen, and I protest as I read them I feel every drop of my blood boil 
in my veins when the gentleman said, "The Irish may be good at 
the voting-booths, but they ai-e no good to handle a rifle." He 
compares us in this essay to a "pack of hounds." He says: "To 
deliver Ireland — to give Ireland any meed — would be the same as 
if a gentleman, addressing his hounds, said, 'I give you your free- 
dom ; now, go out to act for yourselves.'" That is, he means to 
say, that, after worrying all the sheep in the neighborhood, they 
ended by tearing each other to pieces. I deplore this feeling. The 
man who is possessed of it can never understand the philosophy of 
Irish history. 



FATHER BURKE. 209 

Thirdl}^ Mr. Froude is utterly unfit for the task of deliueatiiig 
and interpreting tlie history of the Irish people because of the more 
than contempt and ])itter hatred and detestation in which he holds 
the Catholic religion and the Catholic Church. In this book before 
me he speaks of the Catholic Church as an old serpent whose pois- 
onous fangs have been withdrawn from her, and she is uow as a 
Witch of Endor, mumbling curses to-day because she cannot burn 
at the stake and shed blood as of old. He most invariably charges 
the Church and makes her responsible for the French massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew's day ; for the persecutions of the Duke of Alva, 
before those days, that originated from the revolution in the Nether- 
lands against Philip the Second ; for every murder that has been 
committed and fouler butchery. He says, from the virus of a most 
intense prejudice, that the Catholic Church lies at the bottom of 
them all, and is responsible for them. The ver}' gentlemen that 
welcomed and surrounded him when he came to New York gave 
him plainly to understand where the Catholic religion is involved, 
where a favorite theory is to be worked out, where a iavorite view 
is to be proved, that they did not consider him a reliable, trust- 
worthy witness or, where his prejudices are concerned, historian. 
Yet I again declare — not that I believe this gentleman to be capa- 
ble of lying ; I believe he is incapable — but, wherever prejudice 
comes in such as he has, he distorts the most well-known facts for 
his own purposes. This gentleman wishes to exalt Queen Elizabeth 
by blackening IMary, Queen of Scots. In doing this he has been 
convicted by a citizen of Brooklyn of putting his owu words as if 
they were the words of ancient chronicles and ancient laws, deeds 
and documents, and the taunt has been flung at him, "that Mr. 
Froude has never gra/tped the meaning of inverted commas." Henry 
the Eighth, of blessed memory, has been painted by this historian 
as a most estimable man, as chaste and as holy as a monk, bless 
your soul ! A man that never robbed anybody, who every day was 
burning with zeal for the public good. As to putting away his wife 
and taking in the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn to his embrace, 
that was from a chaste anxiety for the public good ! All the atroci- 
ties of this monster in human form — all — melt away under Mr. 
Fronde's eye, and Henry the Eighth rises before us in such a form 
that even the Protestants in England, when they heard Mr. 



210 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Fronde's description of him, said : " Ohi ! you have mistaken your 
man, sir." 

One fact will show you liow this gentleman treats iiistor_y : When 
King Henry the Eighth declared war against the Church, and when 
all England was convulsed by this tyranny — one day hanging a 
Catholic because he would not deny the supremacy of the Pope, 
the next day hanging a Protestant because he denied the Real 
Presence — anybody that differed from Henry was sure to be sent 
to the scaffold. It was a sure and expeditious way of silencing all 
argument. 

During this time, w^hen the monasteries were beginning to be pil- 
laged, the Catholic clergy of England, especially those who remain- 
ed faithful to the Pope, were most odious to the tyrant, and such 
was the slavish acquiescence of the English people that they began 
to hate their clergy in order to please their king. Well, at this 
time a certain man, whoso name was Hunn, was lodged a prisoner 
in the Tower and hanged by the neck. There was a coroner's inquest 
held upon him, and the twelve blackrjuards — I can call them nothing 
else — in order to express their hatred for the Church and to please 
the powers which were, found a verdict against the chancellor of 
the Bishop of London, a most excellent priest, whom everybody 
knew to be such. When the bishoi^ heard of this verdict, he 
applied to the Prime Minister to have the verdict quashed. He 
brought the matter before the House of Lords, in order that the 
character of his chancellor might be fully vindicated. The king's 
Attorney-General took cognizance of it by a solemn decree, and the 
verdict of the coroner's inquest was set aside, and the twelve men 
declared to be twelve perjurers. Now listen to Mr. Froude's ver- 
sion of that story. He says : "The clergy of the time were reduced 
to such a dreadful state that actually a coroner's inquest returned a 
verdict of wilful murder against the chancellor of the Bishop of Lon- 
don, and the bishop was obliged to apply to Cardinal Wolsey fo 
have a special jury to try him, because if he took any twelve men in 
London, they would have found him guilty." Leaving the reader 
under the impression that this priest, this chancellor, was a monster 
of iniquity, and the priests of the time were as bad as he — leaving 
the impression that a man was guilty of the murder who was inno- 
cent as Abel, and who, if put for trial before twelve of his country- 



FATHER BURKt:. 211 

men, they would have found bim guilty on the evidence — this is 
the version he jouts upon it, he knowing the facts as well as I know 
them. 

Well, now, my friends, I come to consider the subject of his first 
lecture. Indeed, I must say I never practically experienced the 
dilBculty of hunting a Avill-o'-the-wisp in a marsh until I came to 
follow this learned gentleman in his first lecture. I say nothing 
disrespectful of him at all, but simply say he covered so much 
ground at such unequal distances that it was impossible to follow 
him. He began by remarking how General Eufus King wrote such 
a letter about certain Irishmen, and said that the Catholics of Ireland 
sympathized with England, while the Protestants of Ireland wero 
breast high for America in the old struggle between this country and 
Great Britain. All these questions which belong to our day I will 
leave aside for the close of these lectures. When I come to speak 
of the men and things of our own day, then I shall have great 
pleasure in taking up Mr. Fronde's assertions. But, coming home 
to the great question of Ireland, what does this gentleman tell iis? 
For seven hundred years Ireland was invaded by the Anglo-Nor- 
mans. The first thing, apparently, that he wishes to do is to justify 
this invasion, and establish this principle, that the Normans were 
right in coming to Ireland. He began by drawing a terrible picture 
of the state of Ireland before the invasion. " Thej^ were cnttin"' 
each other's throats, the whole land was covered with bloodshed. 
There Avas in Ireland neither religion, morality, nor government; 
therefore the Pope found it necessary to send the Normans to Ire- 
land, as you would send a policeman in a saloon where the people 
were killing one another." This is his justification, that in Ireland, 
seven hundred years ago, just before the Norman invasion, there 
was neither religion, morality, or government. Let us see if he is 
right. 

The first proof that he gives that there was no government in Ire- 
land is a most insidious statement. He says, "How could there be 
any government in a countrj' where every family maintained itself 
according to its own ideas of right and wrong, acknowledjring no 
authority." Now, if this be trne in our sense of the word " family," 
certainly Ireland was in a most deplorable state — every family irov- 
erning itself according to its notions, and acknowledging no author- 



212 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE 

ity. What does he mean by the words " every family"? Speaking 
to Americans in the nineteenth century, it means every household in 
the land. We speak of familj' as composed of fatiier, mother, and 
thi-ee or four children gathered around the domestic hearth. This 
is our idea of the word family. I freely admit if every family in 
Ireland were governed by their own ideas, admitting of no authority 
over them, he has established his case in one thing against Ireland. 
But what is the meaning of the words " every family ? " As every 
Irishman who hears me to-night knows, it meant the " sept," or the 
tribe, that had the same name. They owned two or three counties 
and a large extent of territory. The men of the same name were 
called the men of the same family. The MacMurraghs of Leinster, 
the O'Tooles of Wicklow, the O'Byrncs in Kildare, the O'Conors of 
Connaught, the O'Neils and the O'Donnells of Ulster. The family 
meant a nation. Two or three counties were governed by one 
chieftain and represented by one man of the sept. It is quite true 
that each family governed itself in its own independence, and ac- 
knowledged no superior. There were five great fmiiiies in Ireland. 
The O'Conors in Connaught, the O'Ncilt, in Ulster, the MacLaugh- 
lins in Meath, the O'Brien's in Munster, and the MacMurraghs in 
Leinster. And under these five great heads there wore minor septs 
and smaller families, each counting from five or six hmidred to perhajis 
a thousand fighting men, but all acknowledging in the different prov- 
inces the sovereignt}' of the five great royal houses. These five 
houses, again, elected their monarch, or supreme ruler, called the 
Avd-righy who dwelt in Tara. Now, I ask you, if family meant 
the whole sept or tribe, or army in the field, defending their families, 
having their regular constituted authority and head, is it fair to s:iy 
that the country was in anarchy because everj- famil}' governed them- 
selves according to their own notions? Is it fair for this gentleman 
to try to hoodwink and deceive the American jury, to which he has 
made his appeal, by describing the Irish family, which meant a sept 
or tribe, as a family of the nineteenth century, which means only 
the head of the house with the mother and the children ? 

Again he says : " In this deplorable state the people lived like 
the New Zealanders of to-day — lived in underground caves." And 
then he boldly says " that I myself opened up in Ireland one of these 
underground houses of the Irish people." Now, mark. This gen- 



FATHER BURKE. ^|3 

tleman lived in Ii-eland a few years ago, and he discovered a ralli in 
Kerry. In it he found some remains of mussel-shells and bones. 
At the time of the discovery ho had the most learned archjeologist 
in Ireland with him, and they put together their heads about it. 
Mr. Froude has written in this very book " that what these places 
were intended for, or the uses they were applied to, baffled all con- 
jecture ; no one could tell." Then if it baffled all conjecture, and 
he did not know what to make of it — if it so puzzled him then that 
no man could declare what they were for — what right has he to 
come out to America and say they were the ordinary dwellings of 
the people? 

In order to understand the Norman invasion, I must ask you to 
consider first, my friends, the ancient Irish constitution which gov- 
erned the land. Ireland was governed by " septs," or families. The 
land from time immemorial was in the possession of these families 
or tribes ; each tribe elected its own chieftain, and to him they paid 
the most devoted obedience and allegiance, so that the fidelity of the 
Irish clansman to his chief was proverbial. The chief, during his 
life-time, convoked an assembly of the tribe again, and they elected 
from amongst the princes of his ftunily the best and the strongest 
man to be his successor, and they called him the Tanist. The 
object of this was that the successors of the king might be known, 
and at tlie king's death or the prince's death there might be no riot 
or bloodshed or contention for the right of succession to him. Was 
this not a wise law? The elective monarchy has its advantages. 
The best man comes to the front, because he is the choice of his 
fellow-men ; for when they come to elect a successor to their prince, 
they choose the best man, not the king's eldest son, who might be a 
booby or a fool. And so they came together and Avisely selected the 
best, the strongest, the bravest, and the wisest man ; and he was 
acknowledged to have the right to the succession. He was the 
Tanist, according to the ancient law of Ireland. Well, these fam- 
ilies, as we said, in the various provinces of Ireland owed allegiance 
and paid it to the king of the provinces. He was one of the five 
great families called " The five great families of Ireland." Each 
prince had his own judge or hrehon, who administered justice in the 
court to the people. These 6;-e7<o)z judges were learned men. The 
historians of the time tell us that they could speak Latin as fluently 



214 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

as tbey could speak Irish. Thoy had estal)lishcd a code of law, and 
all their colleges studied that law ; and when they had graduated in 
their studies, came home to their respective septsor tribes, and were 
established as judges or brehons over the people. Nay, more ; 
nowhere in the history of the island do we hear of an instance where 
a man rebelled or protested against the decision of h'lsbrelion judge. 
Then these tive monarchs in the provinces elected an Ard-righ, or 
high-king. With him they sat in council on national matters within 
the halls of imperial Tara. 

There Patrick found them in the year 432, minstrel, bard, and 
hrehon, prince, crowned monarch and king; there did he find them 
discussing like lords and true men the alfairs of the nation, when he 
preached to them the faith of Jesus Christ. And while this consti- 
tution remained the clansmen paid no rent for their land. The land 
of the tribe or fomily was held in common. It was the common 
property of all, and the hrehon or judge divided it, and gave to each 
man what was necessary for him, with free right to pasturage over 
the whole. They had no idea of slavery or serfdom among them. 
The Irish clansman was of the same blood with his chieftain. O'Brien, 
who sat in the saddle at the head of his men, was (?) related to 
( !) Gallowglass O'Brien that was in the ranks. No such thing as 
looking down l)y the chieftains upon their people. No such thing 
as a cowed abject submission upon the part of the people to a tyran- 
nical chieftain. In the ranks they stood as freemen, freemen per- 
fectly equal one with the other. We are told by Gerald Barr}^ the 
lying historian , who sometimes, though rarely, told the truth, that 
when the English came to Ireland nothing astonished them more than 
the free and bold manner in which the humblest man spoke to his 
chieftain, and the condescending kindness and spirit of equality in 
which the chieftain treated the humblest soldier in his tribe. 

This was the ancient Irish constitution, my friends. And, now, 
does this look anything like anarchy? Can it be said with truth of 
a land where the laws were so well defined, where everything was 
in its proper place, that there was anarchy? Mr. Fronde says, 
" There was anarchy there, because the chieftains were fighting among 
themselves." So they were, but he also adds, "There was fighting 
everywhere in Europe after the l)reaking up of the Roman Empire." 
Well, Mr. Fronde, fiwhtine: was goinjj on everywhere, the Saxons 



FATHER BURKE. 215 

were fighting the Normans around them in England, and what right 
have you to say that Ireland, beyond all other nations, was given up 
to anarchy because chieftain drew the sword against chieftain from 
time to time. 

So much for the question of government. Now for the question 
of religion. The Catholic religion flourished in Ireland for 600 
years and more before the Anglo-Normans invaded her coasts. For 
the first 300 years that religion was the glory of the world and the 
pride of God's holy Church. Ireland for these 300 years was the 
island-mother home of saints and of scholars. Men came from every 
country in the then known world to light the lamps of knowledge 
and of sanctity at the sacred fire upon the altars of Ireland. Then 
came the Danes, and for 300 years our people were harrassed by 
incessant war. The Danes, as Mr. Froude remarks, apparently with 
a great deal of ai)proval, had no respect for Christ or for religion, 
and the first thing they did was to set fire to the churches and mon- 
asteries. The nuns and holy monks were scattered, and the people 
left without instruction. Through a time of war men don't have 
much time to think of religion or things of peace, and for 300 years 
Ireland was subject to the incursions of the Danes. On Good 
Friday morning, in the year 1014, Brian Boroihme defeated the 
Danes at Clontarf ; but it was not until the 23d of August, 1103, in 
the twelfth century, that the Danes were driven out of the land, by 
the defeat of Magnus, their ( ?) king, at ( ?) Lochstransford, in the 
(?) centre of Ireland. The consequence of these Danish wars was 
that the Catholic religion, though it remained in all its vital strength, 
in all the purity of its faith amongst the Irish people, yet it re- 
mained sadly shorn of that sanctity which adorned for the first 300 
years Irish Christianity. Vices sprung up amongst the people, for 
they were accustomed to war ! war/ war ! night and day for three 
centuries. Where is the people on the face of the earth that would 
not be utterly demoralized by fifty years of war, much less by 300 ? 
The Wars of the Roses in England did not last more than three 
years, and they left the English people so demoralized that almost 
without a struggle they changed their religion at the dictates of the 
bloodthirsty and licentious tyrant, Henry VIII. 

No sooner was the Dane gone than the Irish people summoned 
■their bishojis and their priests to council, and we find almost every 



216 TREASURY OP^ ELOQUENCE. 

year after the final expulsion of the Dane a council held. Tliei-e 
gathered the bishops, priests, the leaders, and the chieftains of the 
land, the heads of the great septs or families. There they made 
those laws by which they endeavored to repair all the evils of the 
Danish invasion. Strict laws of Christian morality were enforced, 
and again and again we find these councils assembled to receive a 
Papal legate — Cardinal Papero in the year 11G4, five years before 
the Norman invasion. They invited the Papal legate to the council, 
and we find the Irish people every year after the Norman invasion 
obeying the laws of the council without a murmur. "We find the 
council of Irish bishops asseml)led, supported 1>3' the sword and 
power of the chieftains, with the Pope's legate, who was received into 
Ireland with open arms Avhenever his master sent him, without let 
or hindrance. "When he arrived he was surrounded with all the 
devotion and chivalrous affection which the Irish have always paid to 
their representatives of religion in the country. 

And, my friends, it is Morth our while to see what was the con- 
sequence of all these councils, what was the result of this great 
religious revival which was taking [)lace in Ireland during the few 
years that elapsed between the last Danish invasion and the invasion 
of the Normans. We find three Irish saints reigning together iu 
the Church. Wo find St. Malachi, one of the greatest saints, 
Primate of Armagh; we find him succeeded by St. Celsus, and' 
again, by Gregorius, whose name is a name higii up in the martyr- 
ology of the time. We find in Duljlin St. Lawrence O'TooIe, of 
glorious memory. We find Felix and Chi'istian, Bishops of Lismoi'c ; 
Catliolicus, of Down ; Augustin, of Waterford ; and every man of 
them famed, not only in Ireland, but throughout the whole Church 
of God, for the greatness of their learning and for the brightness of 
their sanctity. We find at the same time Irish monks famous for 
their learning as men of their class, and as fonious for their sanctity. 
In the great Irish Benedictine Monastery of Eatisbon we find Law- 
rence and twelve other Irish monks. We find, moreover, that the 
very year before the Normans arrived in Ireland, iu 1168, a great 
council was held at Athboy, thirteen thousand Irishmen representing 
the nation. Thirteen thousand warriors on horseback attended the 
council, and the bishops and priests with their chiefs, to take the 
laws they made from them and hear whatever the Church commanded 



FATHER BURKE. 21T 

them to obey. "What was the result of all this ? Ah ! my friends, 
I am not speaking from any prejudiced point of view. It has been 
said "that if Mr. Froude gives the liistor^^ of Ireland from an outside 
view, of course Father Burke would have to give it from an inside 
view." Now, I am not giving it from an inside view; I am only 
quoting English authoi'ities. I find that in this very interval between 
the Danish and Saxon invasion, Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
writing to O'Brien, King of Munster, congratulates him on the reli- 
gious spirit of his people. I find St. Anselm, one of the greatest 
saints that ever lived, and Archbishop of Canterbury vmdcr AA'illiam 
Eufus, writes to Murtagh, King of Munster: "I give thanks to 
God," he says, " for the many good things we hear of jour highness, 
and especially for the profound peace which the subjects of your 
realm enjoy. All good men who hear this give thanks to God and 
pray that he may grant you length of daj's." The man who wrote 
that perhaps was thinking while he was ^vriting of the awful anarchy, 
impiety, and darkness of the most dense and terrible kind xviiich 
covered his own land of England in the reign of the Ked King 
William Rufus. And yet we are told, indeed, by Mr. Froude — a 
good judge he seems to be of religion; for he saj's in one of his 
lectures : " Religion is a thing of which one man knows as much as 
another, and none of us knows anything at all " — he tells us that 
the Irish were without religion at the very time when the Irish Church 
was forming itself into the model of sanctity which it was at the 
time of the Danish invasion, when Roderic O'Conor, King of Con- 
naught, was acknowledged by every prince and chieftain in the land 
to be the high-king, or Ard-vigh. 

Now, as far as regards what he says — " that Ireland was M'ithout 
morality " — I have but little to say. I will answer that by one fact. 
A king of Ireland stole another man's wife. His name — accursed ! 
— was Dermot MacMurragh, King of Leinstcr. Every chieftain in 
Ireland, every man, rose up and banisiied him from Irish soil as 
unworthy to live on it. If these were the immoral people — if these 
were the bestial, incestuous, depraved race which they are described 
by leading Norman authorities to be — may I ask you miglit not 
King Dermot turn round and say : " Why are you making war upon 
me : is it not the order of the day? Have I not as good a right to 
be a blackguard as anybody else?" Now comes Mr. Froude, and 



-218 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

says : " The Noi'mans were sent to Ireland to teach the Ten Com- 
mandments to the Irish." In the hmguage of Shakspere, I would 
say : "Oh ! Jew, I thank thee for that word." In these Ten Com- 
mandments the three most important are, in their relation to human 
society, " Thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not kill ; thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife." 

The Normans, even in Mr. Fronde's view, had no right or title 
tinder heaven to one square inch of the soil of Ireland. They came 
to take what was not their own, what they had no right or title to ; 
and they came as robbers and thieves to teach the Ten Command- 
ments to the Irish people, amongst them the commandment, "Thou 
shalt not steal." 

Henry landed in Ireland in 1171. He was after murdering the 
holy xVrohbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas a Beeket. They scat- 
tered his brains before the foot of the altar, before the Blessed 
Sacrament at the Vesper hour. The blood of the saint and martyr 
was upon his hands when he came to Ireland to teach the Irisii, 
"Thou shalt not kill." What was the occasion of their coming? 
When the adulterer was driven from the sacred soil of Erin as one 
unworthy to proftme it by his tread, he went over to Henry, and 
procured from him a letter permitting any of his subjects that chose 
to embark for Ireland to do so, and there to reinstate the adulterous 
tyrant King Dermot in his kingdom. They came there as protectors 
and helpers of adultery to teach the Irish people, "Thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife." 

Mr. Froude tells us they were right, that they were the apostles 
of purity, honesty, and clemency. Mr. Froude " is an honorable 
man." Ah ! but he says, Kemember, my good Dominican friend, 
" that if they came to Ireland , they came because the Pope sent 
them." Henry, in the year 1174, produced a letter, which he said 
he received from Pope Adrian IV., which commissioned himself to 
Ireland, and permitted him there, accordhig to the terms of the letter, 
to do whatever he thought right and fit to promote the glory of God 
and the good of the people. The date that was on the letter was 
1154, consequently it was twenty years old. During the twenty 
years nobody ever heard of that letter, except Henry, who had it in 
'his pocket, and an old man, called John of Salisbury, who wrote 
tow he went to Rome and procured the letter in a hugger-mugger 



FATHER BURKE. 219 

■way from the Pope. Now, let iis examine this letter. It has been 
examined by a better authority than me. It has been examined by 
one who is here to-night, who has brought to bear upon it the acumen 
of his great knowledge. It Avas dated, according to Kbymer, the 
great English authority, 1154. Pope Adrian was elected Pope the 
3d of December, 1154. No sooner was the news of his election 
received in England than John of Salisbury was sent out to con- 
gratulate him by King Henry, and to get this letter. It must have 
been the 3d of January, 1155, before the news reached England; 
for in those days no news could come to England from Rome in less 
than a month. John of Salisbury set out, and it must have been 
another month, the end of Februaiy or the beginning of March, 
1155, before he arrived in Rome, and the letter was dated 1154. 
This date of Rhymer's was found inconvenient, wherever he got it, 
and the current date afterwards was 1155. "But there was a copy 
of it kept in the archives of Rome, and how do you get over that?" 
The copy had no date at all ! Now, this copy, according to Baronius, 
had no date at all, and, according to the Roman laws, a rescript that 
has no date is invalid, just so much waste-paper; so that even if 
Pope Adrian gave it, it is worth nothing. Again, learned authors 
tell us that the existence of a document in the archives of Rome 
does not prove the authority of the document. It may be kept 
there as a mere historical record. 

Bat suppose that Pope Adrian had given the letter to Henry, and 
Hemy had kept it so secret because his mother, the Empress Ma- 
tilda, did not want him to act upon it. Well, when he did act ujion 
it, why did he not produce it ? That was the only warrant on which 
he came to Ii'eland, invaded the country, and he never breathed a 
word to a human being about that letter. There is a lie on the face 
of it ! Oh ! Mr. Froude reminded me " to remember that Alexander 
HI. , his successor, mentions that rescript of Adrian's, and coufii'ms 
it." I answer, with Dr. Lynch and the learned author. Dr. Moran, 
of Ossory, and with many Irish scholars and historians, that Alex- 
ander's letter is a forgery as well as Adrian's, 

I grant that there are learned men who admit the Bull of Adrian 
and Alexander's rescript ; but there are equally learned men who 
deny that Bull, and I have as good reason to believe one as the other, 
and / prefer to believe it ivas a forgery. Alexander's letter bears 



220 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the date 1172. Now, let us see whether it is likely for the Pope 
Alexander to give Henry such a letter, recommending him to go to 
Ireland, the beloved son of the Lord, to take care of the Church, 
etc. Ecmcmber it is said that Adrian gave the rescript, and did not 
know the man he gave it to. But Alexander knew him well ! Henry, 
in 1159 and 1176, supported the Anti-Popes against Alexander, and, 
accoi'diug to Matthew of Westminster, King Henry II., obliged 
every one in England> from the boy of twelve years of age to the 
old man, to renounce their allegiance to Alexander III., and go over 
to the Anti-Popes. Now, is it likely that Alexander would give him 
a rescript telling him to go to Ireland then and settle ecclesiastical 
matters? Alexander himself wrote to Henry, and said to him: 
"Instead of remedying the disorders caused by your predecessors, 
3'ou have added prevarication to prevarication ; you have oppressed 
the Cliurch, and endeavored to destroy the canons of apostolical 
men." 

Such is the man that Alexander sent to Ireland to make them good 
people. According to Mr. Froude, " the Irish never loved the Pope 
until the Normans taught them." What is the ftxct? Until the 
accursed Norman came to Ireland the Papal legate always came to 
the land at his pleasure. No king ever obstructed him ; no Irish 
hand was ever raised against a bishop, priest of the land, or Papal 
legate. After the first legate. Cardinal Vivian, passed over to Eng- 
land, Henry took him by the throat and made him swear that when 
he went to Ireland he would do nothing against the interests of the 
king. It was an iinheard-of thing that archbishops and cardinals 
should be persecuted until the Normans tauglit the world how to do 
it witli their accursed feudal system, concentrating all power in the 
king. 

Ah ! bitterly did Lawrence O'Toole feel it, the great heroic saint 
of Ireland, when he went to England on his last voyage. The 
moment he arrived in England the king's officers made him prisoner. 
The king left orders that he was never to set foot in Ireland again. 

It was this man that was sent over as an apostle of morality to 
Ireland ; he who was the man accused of violating the betrothed wife 
of his own son, Richard I. ; a man whose crimes will not bear repe- 
tition ; a man who was believed by Europe to be possessed of the 
devil ; a man of whom it is written " that when he got into a fit of 



FATHER BURKE. 221 

aiicer he tore off his clothes and sat naked, chcwhig straw like a 
beast." Furthermore, is it likely that a Pope who knew hun so 
well, who suffci'ed so much from him, would have sent him to Ire- 
land — the murderer of bishojDs, the robber of churches, the destroyer 
of ecclesiastical liberty, and every form of liberty that came before 
him. No ! I never will believe that the Pope of Rome was so very 
short-sighted, so unjust, as by a stroke of his pen to abolish and 
destroy the lil)ertics of the most faithful people who ever bowed down 
in allegiance to him. 

But let us suppose that Pope Adrian gave the Bull. I hold still 
it was of no account, because it was obtained under false pretences ; 
for he told the Pope, "The Irish are in a state of miserable exist- 
ence," which did not exist. Secondly, he told a lie, and according 
to the Roman law, a Papal rescript obtained on a lie was null and 
void. Again, when Henry told the Pope, when he gave him that 
rescript and power to go to Ireland, that he would fix everything 
right, and do everything for the glory of God and the good of the 
people, he had no intention of doing it, and never did it ; conse- 
quently tlie rescript was null and void. 

But suppose the rescript was valid. Well, my friends, what power 
did it give Henry? Did it give him the land of Ii-eland? Not a bit 
of it. All it was that the Pope said was, " I give you power to enter 
Ireland, there to do what is necessary for the glory of God and the 
good of the people." At most, he said he wished of the Irish chief- 
tains to acknowledge his high sovereignty over the land. Now, you 
must know that in these early Middle Ages there were two kinds of 
sovereignty. There was a sovereignty that ruled the people and the 
land, the king governing these, as the kings and emperors do in 
Europe to-day. Besides this, there was a sovereignty which required 
the homage only of the chieftains of the land, but which left them in 
perfect liberty and in perfect independence. The latter demanded a 
nominal tribute of their homage and Avorship, and nothing more. 
This was all evidently that the Pope of Rome claimed in Ireland, iJ 
he permitted so much ; and the proof of it here lies, that when 
Henry II. came to Ireland he did not claim of the Irish kings that 
they should give up their sovereignty. He left Roderic O'Conor, 
King of Connaught, acknowledging him as a fellow-king ; he 
acknowledged his royalty, and confirmed him when he demanded 



222 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of him the allegiance and the homage of a feudal prince, a feudal sov- 
ereign ,Jeaving him in jiei'fect independence. 

Again, let us suppose that Henry intended to conquer Ireland and 
bring it into slavery ; did he succeed ? Was there a conquest at all ? 
Nothing like it. He came to Ireland, and the kings and princes of 
the Irish people said to him : " Well, we are willing to acknowledge 
your high sovereignty ; you are the Lord of Ireland, but we are the 
owners of the land. It is simply acknowledging your title as Lord 
of Ireland, nothing more." If he intended anything more, he never 
carried out his intention ; he was able to conquer that portion which 
was held before by the Danes, but not outside. It is a fact that 
when the Irish had driven the Danes out of Ireland at Clontarf, as 
the}' were always straightforward and generous in the hour of their 
triumph, they permitted the Danes to remain in Dublin, Wexford, 
Wicklow, and Waterford, and from the Hill of Howth to AVaterford. 
The consequence was that the whole eastern shore of Ireland was iu 
the possession of the Danes. The Normans came over, and were 
regarded by the Irish as cousins to the Danes, and only took the 
Danish territory, and nothing more ; and they were willing to share 
with them. Therefore there was no cause now for INIr. Fronde's 
second justification of these most iniquitous acts, that Ireland was a 
prey to the Danes. He says the Danes came to the land and made 
the Irish people ferocious, and leaves his hearers to infer that the 
Danish wars in Ireland were only a succession of individual and fero- 
cious contests between tribe and tribe, and between man and man; 
whereas they were a magnificent trial of sti'ength between two of the 
greatest and strongest nations that ever met foot to foot or hand to 
hand on a battle-field. The Danes were unconquerable. 

The Celt for 300 years fought with them, and disputed every inch 
of the land with them, filled every valley in the land with their dead 
bodies, and in the end drove them back into the North Sea and freed 
his native land from their domination. This magnificent contest is 
represented by this historian as a mere ferocious onslaught, daily 
renewed, between man and man in Ireland. The Normans arrived, 
and we have seen how they were received. The Butlers and Fitz- 
geralds went down into Kildare, the De Berminghams and Burkes 
Avent down into Connaught. The people oflered them very little 
opposition, gave them a portion of their lands, and welcomed them 



FATHER BURKE. 223 

amongst them ; they began to love them as if they were their owu 
flesh and blood. But, my friends, these Normans, so haughty in 
England, who despised the Saxons so bitterly that their name for the 
Saxon was "villein," orchui'l, who would not allow a Saxon to sit at 
the same table with them, who never thought of intermarrying with 
the Saxons for many long years ; the j^roud Norman, ferocious in his 
passions, brave as a lion, formed by his Crusades and Saracenic 
wars the bravest warrior of his times, this steel-clad knight disdained 
the Saxon. Even one of their followers, Gerald Barry, speaking of 
the Saxons, says : "I am a Welshman. Who would think of com- 
paring the Welsh with the Saxon boors, the basest race on the face 
of the earth. They fought one battle, and when the Normans con- 
quered them they consented to be slaves forevermore. Who would 
compare them with the Welsh, the Celtic race," says this man, 
"with the brave, intellectual, and magnanimous race of the Celts?" 
Now, my friends, when these Normans went down into Ireland 
amongst the Irish people, went out from the Danish portion of the 
pale, what is the first thing that we see? They threw off their Nor- 
man traits, forgot their Norman-French language, and took to the 
Irish, took Irish wives, and were glad to get them, and adopted 
Irish customs, until in 200 years after the Norman invasion we find 
that these proud descendants of William Fitz Adhelm, the Earls of 
Clanricarde, changed their names to Mac William Burkes oughter and 
eeghter (or the upper and lower sons of William) in the time of 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence ; and as they called themselves by the 
name, so they adopted the language and customs of the country. 
During the four hundred sad years that followed the Norman inva- 
sion down to the accession of Henry VIII. , Mr. Froude has nothing 
to say but that Ireland was in a constant state of anarchy and confu- 
sion, and it is too true. It is perfectly true. Chieftain against 
chieftain ! It was comparative peace before the invasion, but when 
the Normans came in they drew them on by craft and cunning. The 
ancient historian, Strabo, says : " The Gauls always march openly to 
their end, and they are therefore easily circumvented." So when 
the Normans came and the Saxons, they sowed dissensions among 
the people, they stirred them up against each other, and the bold, 
hot blood of the Celt was always ready to engage in contest and in 
war. What was the secret of that incessant and desolating war? 



■224: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

There is no history more puiiiful to read than the history of the Irish 
people from the day that the Norman landed on their coast until the 
day when the great issue of Protestantism was put before the nation, 
and when Irishmen rallied in tliat great day as one man. My 
friends, the true secret is that early and constant effort of the Eng- 
lish to force upon Ireland the feudal sj'stcm, and consequently to 
rob the Irish of every inch of their land and to exterminate the Celtic 
race. I lay this down as the one secret, the one thread, by which 
you may unravel the tangled skein of our history for the 400 years 
that followed the Norman invasion. The Normans and the Saxons 
•came with the express purpose and design of taking every foot of 
land in Ireland and exterminating the Celtic race. It is an awful 
thing to think of, but we have evidence for it. First of all, Henry 
II., whilst he made his treaties with the Irish king, secretly divided 
the whole of Ireland into ten portions, and allowed each of these 
portions to one of his Norman knights. In a word, he robbed the 
Irish people and the Irish chieftains of every single foot of land in 
the Irish territorj^ It is true they were not able to take possession. 
It is as if a master robber wci-c to divide tlic booty before it is taken. 
It is far easier to assign propciiy not yet stolen than to put the 
thieves in possession of it. There were Irish hands and Irish l);ittle- 
bladcs in the way for many a long year, nor has it been accom- 
plished to this day. In order to root out the Celtic race and to 
destroy us, mark the measures of legislation w-hich followed. 

First of all, my friends, whenever an Englishman was put in 
possession of an acre of land he got the right to trespass upon 
his Irish neighbors, and to take their land as far as he could, and 
they had no action in a court of law to recover their land. If au 
Irishman brought an action at law against an Englishman for taking 
half of his tield or for trespassing upon his land, according to the law 
from the very beginning, that Irishman was sent out of court, there 
was no action, the Englishman was perfectly justified. Worse than 
this, they made laws declaring that the killing of an Irishman was 
no felony. Sir John Davis tells us how, upon a certain occasion at 
the assizes of Waterford, in tiie 29th of Edward I., a certain Tiioinas 
Butler brought an action against Robert de Almay to recover certain 
goods that Robert had stolen from him. The case was brought into 
court. Robert acknowledircd that he had stolen the goods, that ho 



FATHER BURKE. 225 

was a thief. The defence that he put in was that Thomas, the man 
he had plundered, was an Irisliman. The case was tried. Now, 
my friends, just think of it ! The issue that was put before the jury 
was whether Thomas, the plaintiff, was an Irishman or an English- 
man? Eobert, the thief, was obliged to give back the goods, for 
the jury found Thomas was an Englishman. But if the jury found 
that Thomas was an Irishman, he might go without the goods ; there 
was no action against him. AVe find tipon the same authority, Sir 
John Davis, a description of a certain occasion at Waterford where a 
man named Eobert Welsh killed an Irishman. He was arraigned 
and tried for manslaughter, and he, without the slightest difficulty, 
acknowledged it. " Yes, I did kill him ; you cannot try me for it, 
for he was an Irishman." Instantly he was let out of the dock, on 
condition, as the Irishman was in the service at the time of an Eng- 
lish master, he should pay whatever he compelled him to pay for the 
loss of his services, and the murderer might go scot free. "Not 
only," says Sir John Davis, "were the Irish considered aliens, but 
they were considered enemies, insomuch that though an Englishman 
might settle upon an Irishman's land there was no redress, )iut if an 
Irishman wished to buy an acre of land from an Englishman, he 
could not do it. So they kept the land they had, and they were 
always adding to it by plunder ; they could steal without ever buying 
any. If any man made a will and left an acre of land to an Irish- 
man, the moment it was proved that he was an Irishman the land 
was forfeited to the Crown of England, even if it was only left in 
trust to him, as we have two very striking examples. We read that 
a certain James Butler left some lands in Meath in trust for charit- 
able purposes, and he left them to his two chaplains. It was proved 
that the two priests were Irishmen, and that it was left to them in 
trust for charitable purposes ; yet the land was forfeited because the 
two men were Irishmen. Later, on a certain occasion, Mrs. Catha- 
rine Dowdall, a pious woman, made a will, leaving some land, also 
for charitable pm-poses, to her chaplain, and the land was forfeited 
because the priest was an Irishman. In the year 1367, Lionel, third 
son of Edward III., Duke of Clarence, came to Ireland, held a par- 
liament, and passed certain laws in Kilkenny. You will scarcely 
believe what I am going to tell you. Some of them were as folIow^s : 
"If any man speak the Irish language, or keep company with the 



226 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Irish, or adopt Irish customs, his lands shall be taken from him and 
forfeited to the Crown of England." " If any Englishman married an 
Irishwoman," what do you think was the penalty ? He was sentenced 
to be half hanged, to have his heai-t cut out before he was dead, and 
to have his head struck off, and every right to his land passed to the 
Crown of England. " Thus," says Sir John Davis, " it is evident 
that the constant design of English legislation in Ireland was to pos- 
sess the best Irish lands and to extirpate and exterminate the Irish 
people." 

Citizens of America, Mr. Froude came here to appeal to you for 
your verdict, and he asks you to sa}^ Was not England justified in 
her treatment of Ireland because the Irish people would not submit? 
Now, citizens of America, would not the Irish people be the vilest 
dogs on the face of the earth if they submitted to such treatment as 
this ? Would they be worthy of the name of men if they submitted 
to be robbed, plundered, and degraded ? It is true that in all this 
legislation we see this same spirit of contempt of which I spoke in 
the beginning of my lecture. But, remember, it was these Saxon 
churls that were thus despised, and ask yourselves what race they 
treated with so much contumely, and attempted in every way to de- 
grade, whilst they were ruining and robbing. Gerald Barry, the 
liar, speaking of the Irish race, said: "The Irish came from the 
grandest race that he knew of on this side of the world, and there are 
no better people under the sun." By the word "better "he meant 
more valiant and more intellectual. Those who came over fi'om 
England were called Saxon " hogs," or churls, while the Irish called 
them Buddaifh Sassenach. These were the men who showed in the 
very system by which they were governed that they could not imder- 
stand the nature of a people who refused to be slaves. They were 
slaves themselves. Consider the history of the feudal system under 
which they lived. According to the feudal system of government 
the king of England was lord of every inch of land in England : 
every foot of land in England was the king's, and the nobles wiio 
had the land held it from the king, and held it under feudal con- 
ditions the most degrading that can be imagined. For instance. 
if a man died and left his heir, a son or daughter, under age, the 
heir or heiress, together with the estate, went into the hands of 
the king. He might, perhaps, leave a widow with ten children ; 



FATHER BURKE. 227 

she would have to support all the children herself out of her dower, 
but the estate and the eldest son or the eldest daughter went into the 
hands of the king. Then, dining their minority, the king could spend 
the revenues or could sell the castle and sell the estate without being 
questioned by any one ; and when the son or daughter came of age, 
' he then sold them in marriage to the highest bidder. We have God- 
frey of Mandeville bujdng for twenty thousand marks from King 
John the hand of Isabella, Countess of Gloucester. We have Isa- 
bella de Linjera, another heiress, offering two hundred marks lo 
King John — for what ? — for liberty to marry whoever she liked, 
and not to be obliged to marry the man he would give her. If 
a widow lost her husband, the moment the breath was out of him 
the lady and the estate were in the possession of the king, and he 
might squander the estate or do whatever he liked with it, and 
then he could sell the woman. We have a curious example of 
this. We have Alice, Countess of Warwick, paying King John 
one thousand pounds sterling in gold for leave to remain a widow 
as long as she liked, and then to marry any one she liked. This 
was the slavery called the feudal system, of which Mr. Froude is 
so proud, and of which he says, "It lay at the root of all that 
is noble and good in Europe." The Irish could not understand 
it, small blame to them ! But when the Irish people found that 
they were to be hunted down like wolves — found their lands were 
to be taken from them, and that there was no redress — over and 
over again the Irish people sent up petitions to the King of Eng- 
land to give them the beuetit of the English law and they would be 
amenable to it, but they were denied and told that they should re- 
main as tlicy were — that is to say, England was determined to 
extirpate them and get every foot of Irish soil. This is the one 
leading idea or principle which animates England in her treatment 
of Ireland throughout those four hundred years, and it is the only 
clue you can find to that turmoil and misery and constant fighting 
which was going on in Ireland during that time. Sir James Cusick, 
the English commissioner sent over b}^ Hemy VIII., wrote to his 
majesty these quaint words : " The Irish be of opinion amongst them- 
selves that the English wish to get all their land and to root them 
out completely." He just struck the nail on the head. Mr. Froude 
himself acknowledges that the land question lies at the root of the 



228 TEEASUKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

whole business. Nay more, the feudal system would have handed 
over every inch of land in Ireland to the Norman king and his Nor- 
man nobles, and the O'Briens, the O'Tooles, the O'Donnells, and 
the O'Conors were of more ancient and better blood than that of 
William, the bastard Norman. 

The Saxon might submit to feudal law and be crushed iuto a slave, 
a clod of the earth; the Celt never would. England's great mistake 
— in my soul I am convinced that the great mistake, of all others 
the greatest — lay in this, that the English people never realized the 
fact that in dealing with the Irish they had to deal with the pi'oudest 
race upon the face of the earth. During these wars the Norman 
carls, the Ormonds, the Desmonds, the Geraldines, the Dc Burghs, 
were at the head and front of every rebellion : the English com- 
plained of them, and said they were worse than the Irish rebels, con- 
stantly stirring up disorders. Do you know the reason why ? Be- 
cause they as Normans were under the feudal law, and therefore the 
king's sheriff would come down on them at every turn with fines and 
forfeitures of the land held from the king ; so by keeping the country 
in disorder they were always able to be sheriffs, and they preferred 
the Irish freedom to the English feudalism ; therefore they fomented 
and kept up these discords. It was the boast of my kinsmen of 
Clanricarde that, with the blessing of God, they would never allow 
a king's writ to run iu Connaught. Dealing with this period in our 
history, Mr. Froude says that the Irish chieftains and their septs, or 
tribes, were doing this or that, the Geraldines, the Desmonds, and 
the Ormonds. I say : "Slowly, Mr. Froude! that the Gei'aldines 
and the Ormonds were not the Irish people ; so don't father their acts 
upon the Irish ; the Irish chieftains have enough to answer for." 
During these four hundred years I protest to you that, iu this most 
melancholy period of our sad history, I have found but two cases, 
two instances that cheer me, and both were the actions of Irish chief- 
tains. In one we find that Turlough O'Conor put away his wife ; 
she was one of the O'Briens. Theobald Burke, one of the Earls of 
Clanricarde, lived with the woman. With the spirit of their heroic 
ancestors, the Irish chieftains of Connaught came together, deposed 
him and drove him out of the place. Later on we find another chief- 
tain, Brian ]\IcM:ihon, who induced O'Donnell, chief of the Hebrides, 
to put away his lawful wife and marry a daughter of his own. The 



FATHER BURKE. 229 

fol lowing year they fell out, and McMahon drowned his own son-in-law. 
The chiefs, O'Donnell and O'Neill, came together with their forces 
and deposed McMahon in the cause of virtue, honor, and woman- 
hood. I have looked in vain through these four hundred years for 
one single trait of generosity or of the assertion of virtue amongst 
the Anglo-Norman chiefs, and the dark picture is only velieved by 
these two gleams of Irish patriotism and Irish zeal in the cause of 
virtue, honor, and purity. 

Now, my friends, Mr. Froudc opened another question in his first 
lecture. He said that all this time, while the English monarchs 
were engaged in trying to subjugate Scotland and subdue their 
French provinces, the Irish were rapidly gaining ground, coming in 
and entering the pale year by year ; the English power in Ireland 
was in danger of annihilation, and the only thing that saved it was 
the love of Ihc Irish for their own independent way of fighting, 
Mhich, though favorable to freedom, was hostile to national unity. 
He says, s[)eaking of that time, " Would it not have been better to 
have allowed the Irish chieftains to govern their own people ? Free- 
dom to whom? Freedom to the bad, to the violent — it is no free- 
dom." I deny that the Irish chieftains, Avith all their faults, were, 
as a class, bad men or violent. I deny that .they were engaged, as 
Mr. Fronde says, in cutting their people's throats, that they were a 
people who would never be satisfied. Mr. Froude tells us emphati- 
cally and significantly that the "Irish people were satisfied witli their 
chieftains ; " but the people are not satisfied under a system where 
their throats are being cut. The Irish chieftains were the bane of 
Ireland by their divisions ; the Irish chieftains were the ruin of their 
country by their want of union and want of generous acijuiescence 
to some gre;it and noble head that would save them bj'' uniting them ; 
the Irish chieftains, even in the daj-s of the heroic Edward Bruce, 
did not rally around him as they ought. In their divisions is the 
secret of Ireland's slavery and ruin through those years. But, with 
all that, history attests that they were still magnanimous enough to 
be the fathers of their people, and to be the natural leaders, as God 
intended them to be, of their septs, families and namesakes. And 
they struck whatever blow they did strike in what they imagined to 
be the cause of right, justice and principle, and the only blow that 



230 TREASUKiT OF ELOQUENCE. 

came in the cause of outraged honor and purity came from the hand 
of the Irish chiefs in those dark and dreadful years. 

I will endeavor to follow this learned gentleman in his subsequent 
lectures. Now a darker cloud than that of mere invasion is lowering 
over Ireland ; noAv comes the demon of religious discord, the sword 
of religious persecution waving over the distracted and exhausted 
land. And we shall see whether this historian has entered into the 
spirit of the great contest that followed, and that in our day has 
ended in a glorious victory for Ireland's Church and Ireland's nation- 
ality, and which will be followed as assuredly by a still more glorious 
future. 






i' ' ^ r 




MASSACRE AT DROGHEDA, 



FATHER BURKE. 231 



■Second Lecture, 

Deliveeed in the Academy of IVIusic, New York, November 
14, 1872. 



IpiADIES AND GENTLEINIEN, — We come now to consider 
^J the second lecture of the eminent English historian who has 
pf come among us. It covers one of the most interesting and 
1 terrible passages in our history, and takes ia three reigns — 

the reign of Henry VIII., the reign of Elizabeth, and the reign of 
James I. I scarcely consider flie reign of Edward VI., or of Philip 
and Mary, worth counting. Mr. Froude began his second lecture 
with a rather startling paradox. He asserted that Henry VIII. was 
a hater of disorder. Now, my friends, every man in this world has 
his hero ; and, consciously or unconsciously, every man selects some 
character out of history that he admires, until at length, by contin- 
ually dwelling on the virtues and excellences of his hero, he comes 
to almost worship him. From among the grand historic names 
written in the world's annals every man is free to select whom he 
likes best, and using this privilege, Mr. Froude has made the most 
singular selection of which you or I ever heard. His hero is Henry 
VIII. It speaks volumes for the integrity of Mr. Fronde's owu 
mind. It is a strong argument that he possesses a charity most sub- 
lime that he is enabled to discover virtues in the historical character 
of one of the greatest monsters that ever cursed the earth. But he 
has succeeded in this, to us, apparent impossibility, and discovered, 
among other shining virtues, in the character of the English Nero a 
greatlove for order and hatred of disorder. Well, we must stop at 
the very first sentence of the learned gentlemen and enquire how 
much truth there is in it, and how much only a figment of imagina- 



232 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tion. AH order in the state is based ou thi'ee grand principles, my 
friends : first, the supremacy of the law ; second, respect for liberty 
of conscience ; and, third, a tender regard for that which lies at the 
foundation of all human society — namely, the sanctity of the mai-- 
riage tie. 

The first element of order in every state is the supremacy of the 
law, for in this lies the very quintessence of human freedom and of 
order. The law is supposed to be, according to the definition of 
Aquinas, "the judgment pronounced by profound reason and intel- 
lect, thinking and legislating for the public good." The law is 
therefore the expression of reason — reason backed by authority, 
reason influenced by the noble motive of the public good. This 
being the nature of law, the very first thing that is demanded for the 
law is that every man shall bow down to it and obey it. No man in 
any community has any right to claim exemption from obedience to 
the law, least of all the man at the head of tlie cfminiunity, because 
he is supposed to represent the nation and nation's spirit, and to give 
to the people an example of virtue and of obedience to the law. 
Was Henry VIII. an upholder of the law ? was he obedient to Eng- 
land's law? I deny it, and I have the evidence of history to back 
me in that denial, and to prove that Henry VIII. was one of the 
greatest enemies of freedom and law that ever lived in this world, 
and cbnsequently one of the greatest tyrants. I shall only give one 
example out of ten thousand whicli might be taken from the history 
of the time. When Henry VIII. broke with the Pope, lie called 
upon his subjects to acknowledge him (bless the mark !) as the 
spiritual head of the Church. There were three abbots of three 
Charter-houses in London — the Abbot of London, the Abbot of 
Asciolum, and the Abbot Belaval. These three abbots refused to 
acknowledge Henry as the supreme spiritual head of the Church. 
They Avei-e arrested and held for trial, and a jury of twelve citizens 
was impanelled to try them. The first pi-inciple of English law, 
the grand palladium of English legislation and freedom, is the perfect 
liberty of a jury. A jury must be free, not onl}'^ from coercion, but 
from prejudice and picjudgment. A jury must be impartial, and 
free to record the verdict at which their impartial judgment has 
arrived. Those twelve men refused to convict the three abbots of 
high treason. Their decision was grounded on this, it has never 



FATHER BURKE. 233 

been known in England that it was Iiigh treason to deny the spiritual 
supremacy of the king. Henry sent word to the jury that if they did 
not find the accused guilty he M'ould visit upon the jury the penalties 
which he had intenj:lcd for the abbots. Thus did he defy the rights 
guaranteed to the English people in the charter of England's liber- 
ties, the Magna Charta, and trample upon the first grand element of 
English jurisprudence — the liberty of the jury. Citizens of Amer- 
ica, would any of you like to be tried for treason by twelve men of 
whom the President of the United States had said that they must 
find yon guilty or the penalties of treason would be visited to them. 
Where would be the liberty and law with which yon arc foi'tunately 
blessed, if your trials by jury Avere conducted after the pattern of 
Mr. Fronde's lover of order and hater of disorder, Ilenrv VIII? 
When Henry prohibited the Catholic religion among his subjects, 
what did he give them instead? Certainly not Protestantism, for to 
the last day of his life if he could have laid hands on Luther, he 
would have made a toast of him. lie heard Mass rip to his death, 
and after his death a solemn High Mass teas celebrated over his 
inflated corpse, that the Lord might have mercij on his soul. All ! my 
friends, some other poor soul, I suppose, got the benefit of that 
Mass. 

The second grand element is respect for conscience. The con- 
science of man, and consequently of a nation, is supposed to be the 
great guide in all the relations that individuals or the people bear to 
God. Conscience is so free that Almighty God himself respects it. 
It is a theological axiom that if a man does wrong when he thinks 
he is doing right, the wrong will not be attributed to him by Al- 
mighty God. Was this m:ui Henry a respecter of conscience? Out 
of teir thousand instances of his contempt for lil)erty of conscience 
— let me select one. He ordered the people of England to change 
their religion, and to give up that grand system of dogmatic teach- 
ing which is in the Catholic Church, where every man knows what 
to believe, what to do, and what to avoid. And what religion did 
Henry offer to the people of England ? He simply said to them : 
Every man in the land must agree with me in whatever I decide in 
religion. More than this, his Parliament — a slavish Parliament — 
every man afraid of his life — passed a law not only making it high 
treason to disagi-ee with the king in anything that he believed, but 



234 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

that no man should dispute anything which the king should even 
believe at any future time. No man was allowed to have a con- 
science. " I am your conscience," he said to the nation ; " I am your 
infallible guide in what you have to believe and what you have to do, 
and any man who disputes my infallibility is guilty of high treason, 
and I will stain my hands in his heart's blood." 

The third great element of order is the great keystone of the arch 
of society — the sanctity of the marriage vow. Whatever else is in- 
terfered with, that mrst not be touched, for the Lord says, " Whom 
God joins together let no man put asunder." No power in heaven 
or in earth, much less in hell, can dissolve the tie of marriage. But 
the hero, this "lover of order and hater of disorder," had so little 
respect for the sanctity of marriage that he put away from him, 
brutally, his lawful wife, agd took in her stead, while she was yet 
living, a woman supposed to be his own daughter. He married six 
wives. Two he repudiated, divorced ; two he beheaded ; one died in 
childbirth ; the sixth and the last, Catherine Parr, fouud her name 
among the list of destined victims in Henry's book, and would have 
had her head cut oft' had the monster lived a few days longer. I 
ask you if it is not too much in face of these facts, taken from his- 
tory, for Mr. Froude to come before an enlightened and intelligent 
American public and ask them to believe the absurd paradox that 
Henry VIII. was an admirer of order and a hater of disorder. 

But Mr. Froude may say this is not fair ; I said in my lecture that 
I would have nothing to do with Henry VIII. 's matrimonial transac- 
tions. Ah ! Mr. Froude, you were wise. But at least Mr. Froude 
says. In his i-elations to Ireland "I claim that he was a hater of dis- 
order," and the proofs he gives are as follows : 

First, he saj^s that one of the curses of Ireland is absentee land- 
lords, and he is right. Henry VIII., he says, put an end to that 
absenteeism in the simplest way imaginable. He took the estates 
from the alisentees aud gave them to other people who were willing 
to live on them. That sounds very plausible. Let us anal3'ze it. 
During the Wars of the Koses between Lancaster and York, which 
preceded the Kefoimation in England, many old Anglo-Norman 
families settled in Ireland crossed over to England and joined in the 
fight. It was an English question aud an English war, and the con 
sequence was that many English settlei's in Ireland abandoned their 



FATHER BURKE. 235 

estates to take part in it. Others again left Ireland because they had 
hu-o-e Eno'lish properties, and preferred to reside in England. 
When Henry VIII. ascended the throne, the English pale consisted 
of about one-half of the counties of Louth, Meath, Wicklow, Dub- 
lin, and Wexford. According to Mr. Fronde, Henry did a great 
act of justice in taking the estates of the English absentees and par- 
celling them out among his own favorites and friends. It is a historic 
fact that the Irish people, as soon as the English settlers retired, 
came in and repossessed themselves of these estates, which were their 
own property. And mark, my friends, that even had the Irish 
people no title to that property as their ancient and God-given inher- 
itance, they had the right which is everywhere recognized. Bona 
derelicla mntprimi capientis — vi\i\ch., in plain English, means that 
things abandoned belong to the man who is first to get hold of them. 
But much more' just was the title of the Irish to the lands abandoned 
by the English. The lands were their own. They had been un- 
justly dispossessed of them, and they had the right to regain them. 
They therefore had two titles. The land was theirs because they 
found it untenanted, theirs because they had once owned it and 
never lost the right of it. But Henry, being a lover of order, dis- 
possessed the absentees of their estates and turned the property over 
to other Englishmen, men who would live in Ireland and on the land, 
and Mr. Fronde claims that in so doing he acted well for the Irish 
people. But the doing of this involved the driving of the Irish 
people a second time from their own property. Suppose that the 
President of the United States should seize your property and give 
it to a friend of his, and say to you, " Now, my friend and fellow- 
citizen, remember I am a lover of order ; I have given you a resi- 
dent landlord." Such was the benefit which Henry conferred on 
Ireland in turning out the Irish owners to give place to English resi- 
dent landloi-ds. 

In 1520 Henry sent the Earl of Surrey to Ireland. Surrey was 
a brave soldier, a stern, rigorous man. Henry thought that by send- 
ing him over and backing him with an army he would be able to 
reduce to order the disorderly elements of the Irish nation. That 
disorder reigned in Ireland I readily admit. But in tracing that 
disorder to its cause I claim that the cause is not to be found in any 
inherent restlessness of the Irish character, though they are fond of 



236 TREA.SUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

a fight, I grant that ; Init the main cause was the unjnst and inhuman 
legisUition of English rulers for four hundred years, and the pres- 
ence in Ireland of the Anglo-Norman chieftains, who Avere anxious 
to foment disturbance in order that they might escape the 2:)ayment 
of their dues to the king. Surrey came over and found — brave, 
accomplished general as he was — that the Irish were too much for 
him. He said to Henry, " The only way to subdue this people is to 
conquer them utterly ; to go in with fire and sword." This, Surrey 
felt, could not be done, for the country was too extensive, the situa- 
tion too unfavorable, and the population too determined to be sub- 
jected. Then Henry took up a policy of conciliation. Mr. Fronde 
gives the English monarch great credit for trying to conciliate the 
Irish. He did it because he could not help it. There is a passage, 
my friends, in the correspDndence between Surrey and Henry which 
• speaks volumes. The earl says that when he arrived in Ireland he 
found the peoi)le in the midst of war and confusion ; but the people 
who were really the source of the confusion he declared to be not so 
much the Irish as the Anglo-Norman lords in Ireland. Here is the 
passage : 

"The two Irish chieftains, McConnal Oge and McCarty Euah, or 
Bed McCarty, are more favorable to order than some Englishmen 
here." 

In the letter of one of Ireland's bitter enemies is found the 
answer to Mr. Froude's repeated assertion that the Irish are so dis- 
orderly and so averse to good government that to reduce them to 
order you have to sweep them away altogether. The next feature 
of Surrey's policy was to set chieftain against chieftain. He M'rites : 

"I am endeavoring to perpetuate the^mimosity between O'Donnell 
and O'Niall in Ulster. It would be dangerful to have both agree 
and join together." 

Well may Mr. Froude say that when the Irish are a unit they will 
be invincible, and no power on earth can keep us slaves. Surrey 
says : 

" It would be dangerful if both should agree and join together. 
The longer they continue in war the better it shall be for your gra- 
cious majesty's poor subjects here." 

Mark the spirit of that letter, showing as it does the whole policy 
of England's treatment of Ireland. He does not speak of the Irish 



FATHER BURKE. 237 

as subjects of the King of Eiiglan'l. j.aere is. not the slightest con- 
sideration for tlie uiifottuiiiitc Irisii who are being baited agtunst each 
other. Let them contend the longer in war, the more will be swept 
awaj', and "the better it will'be for your gracious majesty's poor 
sulyects here." The whole object of Henry's policy and Henry's 
legislation was to protect the settlers and exterminate the Irish. 

Sir John Davidson, Attorney-General to James I., writing of 
English legislation, said that for hundreds of years it had been 
merciless to Ireland. 

Then the Earl of Surrey having failed to reduce the Irish, Henry, 
according to Sir. Froude, tried home rule in Ireland. Here Mr. 
Froude tries to make a point for his hero. Irishmen, he says, ad- 
mire this man who tried the experiment of home rule in your coun- 
try, and finding you were not able to govern yourselves, he had to 
take a whip and drive you. One would imagine that homo rule 
means that Irishmen should have the management of their own 
affairs and _ make their own laws. For home rule means this or 
nothing. Home rule must be a delusion and a snai"e, or it means 
that the Irish people have a right to assemble in parliament, govern 
themselves, and make their own laws. But Henry's rule meant 
first this : the appointment of tlie Earl of Kildare to be Lord Lieu- 
tenant and Deputy. Henry did not say to the Irish nation, "Send 
your representatives to national parliament and make your own 
laws ; " he did not call on the Irish chieftains to govern the country, 
on O'Brien, O'Neill, McCarty, or O'Donnell, ou the men who had 
the right by inheritance and lineage to govern Ireland. He said to 
the Anglo-No/man lords, the most quarrelsome, unnatural, and rest- 
less class that I have ever read of in history, "Take the government 
in your own hands." And see the consequences. The Norman 
lords are no sooner left to govern than the}' malve war on Ireland. 
The first thing that Kildare does is to summon an army and lay 
waste the territories of his Irisli fellow-chieftains around him, and 
after a time the Anglo-Normans fell out among themselves. The 
great Anglo-Norman family of the Butlers were jealous of Kildare, 
who was a Fitzgerald. They procured his imprisonment for treason, 
and in truth Kildare did carry on a treasonable correspondence with 
Francis I. of France and Cliarles V. of Germany. When Kildare 
was lodged in the Tower of London, his son, Silken Thomas, re- 



238 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

volted, because he believed that his fatiier was al)out to be put to 
death. King Henry deckrod war against him, and Thomas against 
the king. The consequence of the war was tliat the whole province 
of Munster and a part of Leinster were ravaged, people destroyed and 
villages burned, until there was nothing left to feed man or beast ; 
and this was the result of Henry's "home rule." Kildarc's appoint- 
ment as Lord Deputy led to the almost utter ruin of the Irish 
people. 

Perhaps you will ask me. Did the Irish people take part in that 
war so as to justify Henry VIII. ? I will answer by saying they 
took no part, for it was an English business from the beginning to 
the end. The Irish chieftains took no interest in that war. We 
read that only O'Carroll, and O'Moore of Ossory, and another — 
that these were the only Irish chieftains that took part in the matter 
at all. These three chieftains of whom I speak were of very small 
importance, and by no means represented the Irish people of Muns- 
ter or any other Irish province. And yet from this veiy fact we are 
made to believe that the Irish people joined and agreed with the 
party of whom Henry VIII. was the head. 

Mr. Froude goes on to say, '' The Irish people got to like Henry 
VIII." If they did, I do not admire their taste. " He pleased (he 
might have said blessed) them," said Mr. Froude, "and they got 
fond of him." Then he goes on to show the reason why it was that 
" Henry never showed any disposition to dispossess the Irish people 
of their lands or to exterminate them." Honest Henry I I take 
him up on that point. Is that true, or is it not? Fortunately for 
the Irish historian, the state papers are open to us as well as to Mv. 
Froude. What do the state papers of the reign of Henry VIII. tell 
us ? They tell us that a project was formed during the reign of this 
monarch to bring the whole Irish nation into Connaught, which 
meant dispossession, or, in other words, extermination. Of this 
fact there is no question. Henry VIII. had a ])roclamation issued 
to that effect. The Council governing Ireland sanctioned it, and 
the people of England desired it so much that the paper on this sub- 
ject ends with these words : 

"In consequence of certain promises brought to pass, there shall 
no Irish be on this side of the waters of Shannon unprosecuted, 
unsubdued, and unexikd. Then shall the English pale be well two 
hundred miles in length and more." 



FATHER BURKE. 239 

More than this, we have the evidence of the state papers of the 
time of Henry VIII., meditating and contemplating the utter extir- 
pation, the utter sweeping away and destroying, of the wliole Irish 
race ; for we find the Lord Deputy of the Council of Dublin writing 
to his majesty, and here are his words : 

"They tell him that his project is impracticable. The land is 
very large, by estimation as large as England; so that to inhabit . 
the whole with new inhabitants the numbers would he so gi'eat that 
there is no prince in Christendom that would conscientiously allow 
so many subjects to depart out of his realms." 

Not enough of English subjects to fill up the place of the Irish. 
Humanity indeed ! Extirpate the whole race ! was the cry. But 
this could not be done, considering the great difliculty the new 
inhabitants would have to contend with. But then the document 
goes on to say : 

" This is a difficult process (this extermination) considering the 
misery those Irishmen can endure — viz., both hunger, cold, and 
thirst, and these a great deal more than the inhabitants of any other 
land." 

They sought utterly to Ixmish from Ireland the people of that land. 
Great God ! This (Henry VIII.) is the man that Mr. Froude tells 
us is the friend of Ii'eland. This is the man who is " the great 
admirer of order and the hater of disorder." Certainly he was afeout 
to create a magnificent order of things, for his idea was, if the 
people are troublesome and you want to reduce them to quiet, "kill 
them all." Just look at it. It is just like those nurses who do the 
baby farming in England — on the principle of farming out children. 
When the child is a little cross or disagreeably unmauage;il)le, they 
give him a dose of poison and it quiets him. Do you know the 
reason why Henry VIII. pleased them? for there is no doubt about 
it they were greatly pleased with this great English monai'ch. 
While he made an outward show of conciliating them, he was medi- 
tating the utter ruin and destruction of the Irish race, and he had 
the good sense to keep it to himself, and it only comes out in his 
state papers. He treated the Irish with a certain amount of court- 
esy and politeness. Henry was a man of learning, accomplished, 
and of very elegant manners. A man with a bland smile, who could 
give you a cordial shake hands. It is true the next day he might 



240 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

have your head cut ofl", hut still he had the manners of a gentleman. 
It is a strange fact that the two most gentlemanly kings of England 
were the two greatest seoundrels that ever lived on the earth — 
namely, Henry VIII. and George IV. Accordingly, he dealt with 
the Irish people with a certain amount of civility and courtesy. He 
did not go on, like all his predecessors before him, saying: "You 
are the king's enemies ; you are to be all put to death ; you are 
without the pale of the law ; you are barbarians and savages and I 
will have nothing to say to you." Henry said : " Let us see. Can't 
we arrange all difficulties and live in peace and quietness ? " And 
the Irish people were charmed with his kind manner. Ah ! my 
friends, it is true there was a black heart beneath that smiling face, 
and it is also true that the very fact that Mr. Froude acknowledges, 
that Henry VIII. had a certain amount of popularity in the begin- 
ning among the Irish people, proves that if England only knew how 
to treat Ireland with respect and courtesy and kindness, it w-ould 
long since have gained possession of the fidelity of that unhappy 
country, instead of embittering it by the injustice, the tyranny, and 
the cruelty of her laws. And that is what I meant when on last 
Tuesday evening I said that the English contempt for Irishmen is a 
real evil th;it lies at the root of all the bad spirit that exists be- 
tween the two nations, for the simple reason that the Irish people 
are4oo intellectual, too pure, too noble, too heroic to allow them- 
selves to be humbled and enchained, and their pride to be despised. 
And now, my friends, ]Mr. Froude went on to give us a proof of 
the great love the Irish people have for Harry the Eighth. He says 
they were so fond of this king that actually, at the king's request, 
Ireland threw the Pope overboard. Why was it that they threw 
the Pope overboard? We will see. Now, Mr. Fi'oude, fond as we 
were of our glorious Harry the Eighth, we were not so enamored of 
him as you think. We had not fallen so deeply in love with him as 
to sive up the Pope for him. What are the facts of the case? 
Henry about the year 1530, got into difBcullies with the Pope. He 
commenced by asserting his own authority as head of the Catholic 
Church, and picked out an apostate monk, who had neither a char- 
acter for conscientiousness nor virtue, and had him consecrated the 
first Archbishop of Dnl)lin — George Brown. He sent Brown to 
Dublin with a commission to get the Irish nation to follow in the 



FATHER BURKE. 241 

wake of the English, and to throw the Pope overboard and acknowl- 
edge Henry's supremacy. Bi'own arrived in Dublin. He called the 
bishops together and said : " I think you must change your alle- 
giance. You must give up the Pope and t:ike Henry, King of 
England, in his stead." Cramer, the Archbishop, said, "What 
blasphemy is this that I hear? Ireland will never change her faith, 
renounce her Catholicity ; and she would have to renounce it by 
renouncing the head of the Catholic Church." And the bishops of 
all Ireland followed the Primate, all the pastors of Ireland followed 
the Primate, and George Brown wrote the most lugubrious letter to 
Thomas Cromwell, and in it he said, among other things, " I would 
return to EngLuid, only I am afraid the king would have my head 
taken off. I am afraid to return to England." Three years later, 
however, Brown and the Lord Deputy summoned a parliament, and 
it was at this parliament of 1537, according to Mr. Froude, that 
Ireland threw the Pope overboard. Now, what are the facts? A 
parliament was assembled, and from time immemorial in Ireland 
whenever a parliament was assembled there were three delegates, 
called proctors, from every district in Ireland, who sat in the House 
by virtue of their office. When the parliament was called, the first 
thing they did was to banish the three proctors and deprive them 
of their seats in the House. Without the slightest justice, without 
the slightest show or pretence of either right, or law, or justice, the 
proctors were excluded, and so the ecclesiastical element of Ireland 
was precluded from the parliament of 1537. Then, partly by bribes 
and threats, the Irish little boroughs that surrounded Dublin took 
an oath that Henry was head of the Church, and Mr. Froude calls 
this the apostasy of the Irish nation. With that strange want .of 
knowledge, for I can call it nothing else, he imagines that the Irish 
'remained Catholics, even though he asserts they gave up the Pope. 
They took, he says, the oath — bishops and all — and thereby 
acknowledged Henry VIII. 's supremacy. But, nevertheless, they 
did not become Protestants, they still remained Catholic ; and the 
reason why they didn't take to Elizabeth was because she wanted to 
entail on them the Protestant I'eligion as well as the oath of supre- 
macy. The Catholic Church and its doctrines they abided by, and 
they believed then, as they do now, that there is no man a Catholic 
who is not in communion with the Pope of Eome. Henry VIII. , 



242 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

who was a learned man, had too much logic and too much theology^ 
and too much sense to become M'hat is called a Protestant. He 
never embraced the doctrines of Luther, but held on to every idea 
of Catholic doctrine to the very last day of his life, except that he 
refused to acknf)wledgc the Pope, and on the day that Henry VIH. 
refused to acknowledge the Pope he refused to be a Catholic. To 
pretend that the Irish peeple were so ignorant as to imagine that 
tliey could throw the Pope overboard and still remain Catholic is to 
offer to the genius and intelligence of Ireland a gratuitous insult. 
It is true that some of the bishops apostatized. They took the oath 
of supremacy to Hemy VIII. Their names will ever be held in 
contempt by the Irish people. 

Five bishops only apostatized. The rest of Ireland's episcopacy 
remained faithful. George Brown, the apostate Archbishop of Dub- 
lin, acknowledged that of all the priests in the diocese of Dublin he 
could only induce three to take the oath of spiritual allegiance to 
Henry VIII. There was a priest in Connaught, Dominic Tirrell, 
and he took the oath of allegiance simply because he was oli'ered the 
diocese of Cork. Alexander Devereaux, Abbot of Dunbardy, was 
given the diocese of Ferns, in the County of Wexford, in order ta 
induce him to swear allegiance to the English king. These are all 
the names that represent the national apostasy of Ireland. Out of 
so many hundreds eight were found wanting, and still Mr. Froude 
tells us the Irish bishops and priests threw the Pope overboard. He 
(Mr. Froude) makes another assertion, and I regret he made it. I 
refer to it because there is much in the learned gentleman to admire 
and esteem. He asserts that the bishops of Ireland in those days 
were immoral men ; that they had families ; that they were not like 
the venerable men we see in the episcopacy of to-day. Now, I as- 
sert there is not a shred of testimony to bear up Mr. Froude in this* 
wild assertion. I have read the history of Ireland — national, civil, 
ecclesiastical — as far as I could, and nowhere have I seen even an 
allegation which lays a proof of immorality against the Irish clergy or 
their bishops at the time of the Keformafion. But perhaps when 
Mr. Froude said this he meant the apostate bishops. If so, I am 
willing to grant him whatever he charges against them, and the 
heavier it is the more pleased I am to see it going against them. 

The next passage iu the relation of Henry VIII. to Ireland, goes 



FATHER BURKE. 243 

to prove that Ireland did not throw the Pope overboard. My friends, 
in the year 1541 a Parliament assembled in Dublin and declared that 
Henry VIII. was King of Ireland. They had been four hundred 
years and more fighting for the title, and at length it is conferred by 
the Irish Parliament upon the English monarch. Two years later, 
in gratitude to the Irish Parliament, Henry called the Irish chief- 
tains together at Greenwich to a grand assembly, and on the first 
day of July, 1543, he gave the Irish chieftains their English titles. 
O'Neill of Ulster got the title of Earl of Tyrone ; the glorious O'Don- 
nell the title of Earl of Tyrconuel ; Ulric McWilliams Burke, Earl 
of Clanricarde ; Fitzpatrick received the name of Baron of Ossory, 
and they returned to Ireland with their new titles. Henry, however, 
open-handed, poor generous fellow — and he was really very generous- 
— gave those chieftains not only the titles, but a vast amount of jH'op- 
erty — only it happened to be stolen from the Catholic Church. He 
"was an exceedingly generous man with other people's goods. He 
had a good deal of that spirit of which Artemus Ward makes men- 
tion. He (Artemus Ward) says he was " quite contented to see his 
wife's first cousin go to the war." In order to eii'ect the refomiation 
. in question in Ireland, Henry gave to these worthy earls with their 
English titles all the abbey lands and convents and churches within 
their possessions. The consequence was he enriched them, and to 
the eternal shame of the O'Neill and O'Donnell, McWilliams Burke, 
and the Fitzpatrick of Ossory, they had the cowardliness and weak- 
ness to accept those things at his hands. They came home with the 
spoil of the monasteries, but the Irish people were as true as they 
were before the day when the Irish chieftains proved false to their 
country. Nowhere in the previous history of Ireland do we find the 
clans rising against their chieftain. Nowhere do we hear of the 
O'Neill or O'Donnell dispossessed by his own people. But on this 
occasion when they came home mark what followed. O'Brien, Earl 
of Thomond, when he arrived in Munster, found half his dominions 
in rebellion against him. With reference to McWilliams Burke, Earl 
of Clanricarde, when his people heard that their leader had accepted 
the abbey lands, the first thing they did was to set up against him 
another man, with the title of McWilliam Ulric de Burgh. O'Neill, 
Earl of Tyrone, was taken when he came home ))y his own son, and 
put into confinement and died there, all his peoj^le abandoning him. 



244 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

O'Donnell of Tyrconnel came home, and his own son and all his 
people rose against him and drove him out from the midst of them. 
Now, I say in the face of all this Mr. Froude is not right in saying 
that Ireland threw the Pope overboard. These people came home 
not Protestants but schismatics, and very bad Catholics, and Ireland 
wonld not stand it. 

Ileury died in 1547, and I really believe that with all the badness 
of his heart, had he lived a few years longer his life would not have 
been a curse but a blessing to Ireland, for the reason that those who 
came after him were worse than himself. He was succeeded by his 
infant son, Edward VI., who was under the care or guardianship of 
the Duke of Somerset. He was a thoroughgoing Protestant. Som- 
erset didn't Ijclicve in the people's supremacy, and was opposed to 
anything that favored the Catholic Church. He sent over his orders 
to put his laws in force against the Church. Consequently the 
churches were pillaged, the Catholic pi'iests were driven out, and, as 
Mr. Froude puts it, "the implements of superstition were put down." 
The implements of superstition, as Mr. Froude calls them, were 
"Jesus Christ crucified," the statues of his Blessed Mother, and his 
saints. All these things were pulled down and destroyed. The 
ancient statue of Our Lady at Trim (County Meath) was broken. 
The churches were burned, and torn down, and, as Mr. Froude puts 
it, " Ireland was taught that she must yield to the new order of things 
or stand by the Pope." " Her national ideas become for evermore 
inseparably linked with the Catholic religion." Glory to you, Mr. 
Froude ! He has not forgotten to mention the fact that from that 
time to the present hour Ireland's independence and Ireland's reli- 
gion became inseparably and irrevocably one. If the learned gentle- 
man were present, I have no doubt that he would rise up and bow 
his thanks to you for the hearty manner in which you have received 
his sentiments. And I am sure that, as he is not here, he will not 
take it ill of me when I thank you in his name. Bloody Mary was 
a Catholic, without a doubt. She persecuted her Protestant subjects. 
Speaking of her in his lecture, Mr. Froude says: "There was no 
persecution of Protestants in Ireland, because there were no Protes- 
tants to be persecuted." And he goes on to say : " Those who were 
in Ireland when Mary came to the throne fled." I must take the 
learned historian to task on this. The insinuation is, that if the 



FATHER BURKE. 245 

Protestants had been in Ireland the Irish would have 2iersecuted 
them. The impression he desires to leave on the mind is that we 
Catholics would be only too glad to stain our hands in the blood of 
our fellow-citizens on the question of i-eligion. But M'hat are the 
facts? The facts are that during the reign of Edward VI., and 
during all the years of his father's apostacy from the Catholic 
Church, there were sent over to Ireland as bishops men whom even 
English historians have convicted and condemned of almost eveiy 
crime. As soon as Mary came to the throne these gentlemen did 
not wait to be ordered out ; they went out of their own accord. 
They thought it was the best of their play to clear out at once. But 
so far as regards the Irish people, I claim for my native land that 
she never persecuted on account of religion. I am proud, in ad- 
dressing an American audience, to be able to lay this high claim for 
Ireland. The genius of the Irish people is not a persecuting genius. 
There is not a people on the face of the earth so attached to the 
Christian religion as the Irish race. There is not a people on the 
face of the earth so unwilling to persecute or shed blood in the cause 
of x'cligion as the Irish. And here ai'e my proofs : Mr. Froude 
says that the Protestants made off as soon as Queen Mary came to 
the throne, but Sir James Ware in his annals tells us that the 
Protestants were being persecuted in England under Mary, and that 
they actually fled over to Ireland for protection. He gives even the 
names of some of them. He tells us that John Harvey, Abel Ellis, 
Joseph Edmunds, and Henry Hall, natives of Cheshire, in England, 
came over to Ireland to avoid persecution in England, and they 
brought with them a AVelsh Protestant minister named Thomas 
Jones. These four gentlemen were received so cordially, were wel- 
comed so hospitably, that they actually founded a highly respectable 
mercantile family in Dublin. But we have another magnificent proof 
that the Irish are not a persecuting race. When James II. assem- 
bled his Catholic Parliament in Ireland in 1G89, after they had been 
robbed and plundered, imprisoned and put to death for their adher- 
ence to the Catholic faith, at last the wheel gave a turn, and in 
1689 the Catholics wei-e up and the Protestants were down. That 
Parliament assembled to the number of 228 members. The Celtic 
or Catholic element had a sweeping majority. What was the first 



246 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

law that they made ? The very first law that the Catholic parlia- 
ment passed was as follows : 

" We hereby declare that it is the law of this land of Ireland that 
neither now nor ever again shall any man be pei'secuted for his 
religion." 

That was the retaliation we took on them. Was it not magnifi- 
cent? Was it not a grand, a magnificent specimen of that spirit of 
Christianity, that spirit of forgiveness and charity withont which, if 
it be not in a man, all the dogmatic truths that ever were revealed 
won't save him? Now, coming to Good Queen Bess, as she is 
called. I must say that Mr. Froude bears very heavil}^ upon her, 
and speaks of her really" in language as terrific in its severity as any 
that I could use, and far more, for I have not the learning nor the 
eloquence of Mr. Froude. He says one little thing of her, how- 
ever, that is worthy of remark : 

"Elizabeth was reluctant to draw the sword, but when she did 
draw it she never sheathed it until the star of freedom was fixed upon 
her banner, never to pale." 

That is a very eloquent passage ; but the soul of eloquence is 
truth. Is it true strictly that Elizabeth was reluctant to draw the 
sword? Answer it, 3'e Irish annals. Answer it, O history of Ire- 
land ! Elizabeth came to reign in 1558. The following year, in 
1559, there was a Parliament assembled by her order in Dublin. 
What do you think of the laws of that Parliament? It was not a 
Catholic Parliament, nor an Irish Parliament. It consisted of 76 
members. Generally speaking, parliaments in Ireland used to have 
from 220 to 230 members. This Parliament of Elizabeth consisted 
of 76 picked men. The laws that that Parliament made were, 
first : 

Any clergyman not using the Book of Common Prayer [the Pro- 
testant Prayer-Book] , or using any other form, either in public or 
in private, the first time that he is discovered, shall be deprived of 
his benefice for one year, and suffer imprisonment in jail for six 
months ; for the second offence he shall be put in jail at the queen's 
pleasure — to be let out whenever she thought proper. For the 
third offence he was to be put in close confinement for life. This is 
the lady that was unwilling to draw the sword, and this was the very 
j^ear she was crowned queen — the very year. She scarcely waited 



FATHER BUEKE. 247 

a year. This was the woman reluctant to draw the sword. So 
much for the priests ; now for the laymen. 

If a layman was discovered using any other prayer-book except 
Queen Elizabeth's prayer-book, he was to be put in jail for one year ; 
and if he was caught doing it a second time, he was to be put in prison 
for the rest of his life. Every Sunday the people were obliged to go 
to the Protestant church, and if any one refused to go, for every time 
that he refused he was tined twelve pence — that would be about 
twelve shillings of our present money — and besides the fine he was 
to endure the censures of the church. " The star of freedom," says 
Mr. Froude, " was never to pale. The queen drew the sword in the 
cause of the star of freedom ! " But, my friends, freedom meant 
whatever was in Elizabeth's mind. Freedom meant slavery tenfold 
increased, with the addition of religious persecution to the unfortu- 
nate Irish. If this be Mr. Fronde's ideal of the star of fi-eedom, all 
I can say is, the sooner such stars fall from the canopy of heaven and 
of the world's history the better. The condition of the Irish Church : 
in what state was the Irish Church? Upon that subject we have the 
authority of the Protestant historian, Leland. There were 220 pai'- 
ish churches in Meath,.and after a few years' time there were only 105 
of them left with the roofs on. "All over the kingdom," says Le- 
land, " the people were left without any religious worship, and under 
the pretence of obeying the orders of the state they seized all the 
most valuable furniture of the churches, which was actually exposed 
to sale without decency or reserve." A number of hungry adven- 
turers were let loose upon the Irish churches and upon the Irish peo- 
ple by Elizabeth. They not only robbed them and plundered their 
churches, but they shed the blood of the bishops and priests and of 
the people of Ireland in torrents, as Mr. Froude himself acknowl- 
edges. He tells us that after the second rebellion of the Geraldines, 
such was the state to which the fair province of Munster was reduced 
that you might go through the land from the farmost point of Kerry 
until you came into the "eastern plains of Tipperary, and you would 
not as much as hear the whistle of a ploughboy or behold the face of 
a living man. But the trenches and ditches were filled with the 
corpses of the people, and the country was reduced to a desolate wil- 
derness. The poet Spenser describes it most emphatically. Even 
he, case-hardened as he was, — for he was one of the plunderers and 



248 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

persecutors himself, — acknowledo^ed that the state of Minister was 
such that no man could look upon it with a dry eye. Sir Henry 
Sidney, one of Elizabeth's deputies, speaks of the condition of the 
country as follows : 

"Such horrible spectacles are to be beheld as the burning of villa- 
ges, the ruin of towns, yea, the view of the bones and skulls of the 
dead, who, partly by murder and partly by famine, have died in the 
fields. It is such that hardly any Christian can behold with a dry 
eye." 

Her own minister — I take his testimony of the state to which this 
terrible woman reduced unhappy Ireland, Stratford, another Eng- 
lish authority, says : 

" I knew it was bad, and very bad, in Ireland, but that it was so 
terrible I did not believe." 

In the midst of all this persecution, what was still the reigning 
idea in the mind of the English Government? To root out and to 
extirpate the Irish from their own land, added to which was now the 
element of religious discord and persecution. It is evident that this 
was still in the minds of the English people. Elizabeth, who, Mr. 
Froude sa3's, never dispossessed any Irishman of an acre of land, 
during the war which she waged in the latter days of her reign against 
O'Neill threw out such hints as these : 

" The more slaughter there is the better it will be for my English 
subjects, the more land they will get." 

This is the woman whom Mr. Froude tells us never confiscated 
and never listened to the idea of confiscation of property. This 
woman, when the Gcraldines were destroyed, took the whole of the 
vast estates of the Eai-1 of Desmond and gave them to her English 
settlers. She confiscated millions of acres. And in the face of strict 
truths, recorded and stamped by history, I cannot see how any man 
can come forward and say of this atrocious woman that whatever she 
did she intended it for the good of Ireland. 

In 1G02 she died, after reigning forty-one years, leaving Ireland 
at the hour of her death one vast slaughter-house. Munster was re- 
duced to the state described by Spenser. Connaught was made a 
wilderness after the rebellion of the Clanricardes, or the Burke fam- 
ily. Ulster, through the agency of Lord Mountjoy, was left the very 
jiicture of desolation. The glorious lied Hugh O'Donnell and the 



FATHER BUKKE. 249 

magnificent Hugh O'Neill were crushed and defeated after fifteen 
years of war, and the consequence was that when James I. succeeded 
Elizal)eth he found Ireland almost a wilderness. 

Mr. Froude, in his rapid historical sketch, says that all this fruit 
brought revenge, and he tells us that in 1641 the Irish rose in rebel- 
lion. So they did. Now, he makes one statement, and with the 
refutation of that statement I will close this lecture. Mr. Froude 
tells us that in the rising under SirPhelim O'Neill in 1642 there were 
38,000 Protestants massacred by the Irish. This is a grave charge, 
and if it be true, all I can say is that I blush for my fathers. But if 
it be not true, why repeat it ? Why not wipe it out fi'om the records ? 
It is true that Ireland rose under Sir Phelim O'Neill. At that time 
there was a Protestant parson in Ireland who called himself a minis- 
ter of the Word of God. He gives his account of tl:e whole trans- 
action in a letter to the people of England, begging of them to help 
their fcliow-Protestants of Ireland. Here are his words : 

" It was the inten-tion of the Irish to massacre all the English. On 
Saturday they were to disarm them, on Sunday to seize all their cat- 
tle and goods, and on Monday they were to cut all the English 
throats. The former they executed ; the third — that is, the massa- 
cre — they failed in." 

Pettit, another English authority, tells us that there Avere 30,000 
Protestants massacred at that time. A man of the name of May foots 
it up at 200,000. I suppose he thought, in for a penny in for a 
pound. But there was an honest Protestant clergyman in Ireland 
who examined minutely into the details of the whole conspiracy, and 
of all the evils that came frcmi it. What does he tell us ? "I have 
discovered," he said — and he gives proofs, state papers and authen- 
tic records — " that the Irish Catholics in that rising massacred 2,100 
Protestants ; that other Protestants said that there were 1,600 more ; 
and that some Irish authorities themselves say there were 3,000, 
making altogether 4,600." 

This is the massacre Mr. Froude speaks of. He tosses off so 
calml}', 38,000 Protestants were massacred; that is to say, he mul- 
tiplies the original number by ten ; whereas Mv. Warner, the au- 
thoi'ity in question, says that there were 2,100, and I am unwilling 
to believe in the additional numbei's that have been sent in. 

After all the sufierings and pei'sccutions which Ireland had endured 



250 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

at the hands of English Protestants, I ask you to set these two 
authorities before your mind. Contrast them and give me a fair 
verdict. 

Is there anything recorded in history more terrible than the per- 
sistent, undying resolution, so clearly manifested, of the English 
Government to root out, to extirpate, and destroy the people of Ire- 
land ? Is there anything recorded in history more unjust than this 
systematic constitutional robbery of a people whom the Almighty 
God created in that island, to whom he gave that island, and who 
had the aboriginal right to every inch of Irish soil? On the other 
handj can history bring forth a more magnificent spectacle than the 
«alm, firm, united resolution with which Ireland stood in defence of 
her religion, and gave up all things rather than sacrifice what she 
conceived to be the cause of truth? Mr. Froude does not believe 
that it is the cause of truth. I do not blame him ; every man has a 
right to his religious opinions. But Ireland believed that it was the 
cause of truth, and Ireland stood for it like one man. 

I speak of all these things only historically. I do not believe in 
animosity. I am no believer in liad blood. I do not believe with 
Mr. Fronde that the question of Ireland's difiiculties must remair 
without a solution ; I do not give it up in despair ; but this I do say, 
that he has no riglit, nor has any other man the right, to come before 
the audience of America tliat has never persecuted in the cause 
of religion — of America, that respects the rights even of the mean- 
est citizen upon her soil — and to ask that American j^eople to sanc- 
tion by their verdict the robberies and persecutions of which Eng- 
land is guilty ! 



FATHER BURKE. £51 



Third Lecture. 

Delivered in the Academy of Music, New York, November 
19. 1872. 



UpADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — I now approach, in answering 
Pm Mr. Froude, some of the most awful periods of our history, 
^ and I confess that 1 approach this terrible ground with hesi- 
i tancy, and with an extreme regret that Mr. Froude should 

have opened up c^uestions which oblige an Irishman to undergo the 
pain of heart and anguish of spirit which a revision of those periods 
of our history must occasion. The learned gentleman began his 
third lecture by reminding his audience that he had closed his second 
lecture with a reference to the rise, progress, and collapse of a great 
rebellion which took place in Ireland in 1641 — that is to say, some- 
what more than two hundred years ago. He made but a passing 
allusion to that great event in our history, and in that allusion — if 
he has been reported correctly — he said simply that the Irish 
rebelled in 1641. This was his first statement, that it was a rebel- 
lion ; secondly, that this rebellion began in massacre and ended in 
ruin ; thirdly, that for nine years the Irish leaders had the destinies 
of their country in their hands ; and, fourthly, that those nine years 
were years of anarchy and mutual slaughter. Nothing, therefore, 
•can be imagined more me'-incholy than the picture drawn by that 
learned gentleman of these nme sad years. And yet I will venture 
to say, and I hope I shall be able to prove, that each of these four 
statements is without sufficient historical foundatitm. My first posi- 
tion is that the movement of 1641 was not a rebellion ; second, that 
it did not begin with massacre, although it ended in ruin ; thirdly, 
that the Irish leaders had not the destiny of their country in their 



252 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

hands during these years ; and, fourth, whether they had or not, 
that these years were not a period of anarchy and mutual slaughter. 
They were but the opening to a far moi-e terrific period. We must 
discuss these questions, my friends, calmly and historically. We 
must liiok upon them rather like the antiquarian prying into the 
past than with the living, wai'm feelings of men whose blood boils up 
with the burnings of so much injustice and so much bloodshed. 

In order to understand this question fully and fiiirly, it is neces- 
sary for us to go back to the historical events of the time. I find, 
then, that James I., the man who planted Ulster — that is to say, 
confiscated utterly and entirely six of the finest counties in Ireland, 
an entire province, rooting out the aboriginal Irish and Catholic 
inhabitants, even to a man, giving the whole country to Scotch and 
English settlers of the Protestant religion, under the condition tliat 
they were not to employ even as much as an Irish laborer on their 
gi'ounds, that they were to banish them all — this man died in 1625 
and was succeeded by his unfortunate son, Charles I. When Charles 
came to the throne, bred up as he was in the traditions of a monarchy 
which Henry VIII. had rendered almost absolute, as we know — 
whose absolute power was still continued in Elizabeth under foi'ms 
the most tyrannical, whose absolute power was continued by his own 
father, James I. — Charles came to the throne with the most exag- 
gerated ideas of royal privileges and supremacy. But during the 
dajs of his father a new spirit had grown up in Scotland and in 
England. The form which Protestantism took in Scotland was the 
hard, uncompromising, and highly cruel form of Calvinism in its 
most repellant aspect. The men who rose in Scotland in defence of 
their Presbyterian religion rose not against Catholic people, but 
against the Episcopalian Protestants of England. They defended 
what tliey called the kirk or covenant. They fought bravely, I 
acknowledge, for it, and they ended in establishing it as the religion 
of Scotland. 

Now, Charles I. was an Episcopalian Protestant of the most sincere 
and devoted kind. The Parliament of England, in the very first 
years of Charles, admitted persons who were strongly tinged with 
Scottish Calvinism. The king demanded of them certain subsidies 
and they i-efused him ; he asserted certain sovereign rights and they 
denied them. While this was going on in England from 1630 to 



FATHER BURKE. 253 

1641, what was the condition of affairs in Ireland? One fei'tilc pro- 
vince of the land had been confiscated by James I. Charles I. was 
in need of money for his own purposes, and his Parliament refused 
to grant any. Then the poor, oppressed, and down-trodden Catho- 
lics of Ii'eland imagined, naturally enough, that the king, being in 
difficulties, would turn to them and extend a little countenance and 
favor if they proclaimed their loyalty and stood by him. According- 
ly, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Falkland, desiring sincerely to aid 
his royal master, hinted to the Catholics, who had been enduring 
the most terrible penal laws from the days of Elizabeth ami James I., 
that perhaps, if they should now petition the king, certain graces or 
concessions might be granted them. These concessions simply 
involved permission of riding over English land and to worship God 
according to the dictates of their own consciences. They sought for 
nothing more, and nothing more was promised them. When their 
petition was laid before the king, his royal majesty issued a procla- 
mation in which he declared that it was his intention, and that he had 
plighted bis word, to grant to the Catholics and people of Ireland 
certain concessions and indulgences, which he named "graces." No 
sooner does the newly-founded Puritan element in England and the 
Parliament that were in rebellion against their king — no sooner did 
they hear that the slightest relaxation of the peual law Avas to be 
granted to the Catholics of Ireland than they instantly rose and pro- 
tested that it should not be ; and Charles, to his eternal disgrace, 
broke his word with the Catholics of Ii-eland after they had sent him 
£120,000 in acknowledgment of his promise. More than that, it 
was suspected that Lord Falkland was too mild a man, too just a 
man, to be allowed to remain as Lord Lieutenant of Ii'eland, and ho 
was recalled, and after a short lapse Wentworth, who was Earl of 
Strafford, was sent there as Lord Lieutenant. Wentworth on his 
arrival summoned a Parliament, and they met in the year 1634. He 
told them the difficulties that the king was in ; he told them how the 
Parliament in England was rebelling against him, and how he looked 
to his Irish subjects as loyal. He perhaps told them that amongst 
Catholics loyalty was not a mere sentiment, that it was an unshaken 
principle, resting on conscience and religion. And then he assured 
them that Charles, the King of England, still intended to keep his 
word, and to grant them their concessions. Next came the usual 



254 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

demand for money, and the Irish Parliament granted six subsidies of 
£50,000 each. Strafford wrote to the king congratulating his 
majesty that he had got so much money out of the Irish, for he said : 
" You and I remember that your majesty expected only £30,000, and 
they have granted £50,000." INIore than this, the Irish Parliament 
voted the king 8,000 infantry and 1,000 horse to fight his rebellion* 
enemies. The Parliament met the following year, 1635, and what 
do you think was the fulfilment of the i-oyal promise to the Catholics 
of Ireland? Strafford had got the money. He did not wish to 
compromise his master the king, and he took upon himself to fix 
upon his memory the indeliljle shame and disgrace of breaking his 
word, which he had plighted, and disappoint the Catholics of Ireland. 
Then, in 1G35, the real character of this man came out, and what do 
you think was the measure he proposed ? He instituted a commis- 
sion for the express purjiose of confiscating, in addition to Ulster — 
that was already gone — the whole province of Connaught, so as not 
to leave an Irishman or Catholic one square inch of ground in that 
land. This he called the Commission of Defective Titles. The 
members of the commission were to enquire into the title of pro- 
perty, and to find a flaw in it if they could, in order that the land 
might be confiscated to the Crown of England. Remember how 
much of Ireland had already been seized, my friends. The whole 
of Ulster had been confiscated by James I. The same king had 
taken the County of Longford from the OTarrels, who had owned 
it from time immemorial ; Wexford from the O'Tooles, and several 
other counties from the Irish families who were the rightful pro- 
prietors of the soil. And now, with the whole of Ulster and the 
better part of Leinster in his hand, this minister instituted a com- 
mission for the purpose of obtaining the whole of the province of 
Connaught and of rooting out the native Irish ! He expelled every 
man that owned a rod of land in the province and reduced them to 
beggary, starvation, and to death. Here is the description of his 
plan as given by Leland, a historian who was hostile to Ireland's 
faith and Ireland's nationality. Leland thus describes this project : 
" It was nothing less than to set aside the title of every estate in 
every part of Connaught, a project which when proposed in the late 
reign was received with horror and amazement, and which suited 
the undismayed and enterprising genius of Lord Wentworth. 



FATHER BURKE. 255 

Accordingly he began in the County of Eoscommon." He passed 
thence to Sligo, thence to Mayo, and then to Gal\va3\ The only 
way in which a title could be upset was to have a jury of twelve 
men, and according to their verdict the title was valid or not. 
Straflbrd began by picking his jury and packing them, the old 
policy that has been continued down to our own time — the policy 
of packing and the prejudging of a jury. He told the jury before 
the trials began that he expected them to find a verdict for the king, 
and finally, by bribing and overawing, he got juries to go for him, 
until he came into my own county, Galway. And, to the honor of 
old Galway be it said, as soon as the commission arrived in that 
county they could not find twelve jurors there base enough or 
wicked enough to confiscate the lands of their felhiw-subjects. 
What was the result ? The County Galway jurors were called to 
Dublin before the Castle Chamber. Every man of them was fined 
£4,000, and put in prison to be kept until the fine was paid. Every 
square inch of their property was taken from them, and the high, 
sherifl' of Galway, being a man of moderate means, and l)aving been 
fined £1,000, died in jail because he was not able to pay the unjust 
imposition. More than this, not content with threatening the juries 
and coercing them, my Lord Straflbrd went to the justices and told 
them that they were to get four shillings on the pound for the value 
of every single piece of property that they confiscated, and he 
boasted publicly that he. had made the chief liaron and the judges 
attend to this business as if it icere their ovm 'pricate concern! This 
is the kind of rule the English historian comes to America to ask the 
honest and upright citizens of this free country to endorse by their 
verdict, and thereby to make themselves accomplices of English 
robber3\ In the same way this Straflbrd instituted another tribunal 
in Ireland which he called the Court of Wards, and do you know 
what this was? It was found that the Irish people, gentle and 
simple, failed to become Protestants. I have not a harsh word to 
say to any of the Protestants, but I do say that every high-minded 
Protestant in the world must admire the strength and fidelity with 
which Ireland, because of her conscience, clings to her ancient faith, 
believing it true. This tribunal was instituted in order to get the 
heirs of Catholic gentry and to bring them up in the Protestant 
religion, and it was to this court of awards that was owing the sig- 



25G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

nificant fact that some of the most ancient and best names in Ireland 
— the names of men whose ancestors fonght for faith and father- 
land — are now Protestants and the enemies of their Catholic fellow- 
subjects. It was by this, and such means as this, that the men of 
my name became Protestants. There was no drop of Protestant 
blood in the Red Earl or the Dun Earl of Clanricarde. There was 
no drop of such blood in the heroic Burkes who fought in the long 
500 years before this time. 

There was no Protestant blood in the O'Briens of Munster or in 
the glorious O'Donnells and O'Neills of Ulster ; yet they are Pro- 
testants to-day. Let no Protestant American citizen imiigine that I 
speak with disdain of his religion, but as a historian it is my duty to 
point out the means, which every high-minded man must brand as 
nefarious, by which the aristocracy of Ireland were led to change 
their religion. The Irish meantime waited, and waited in vain, for 
the fulfilment of the king's promise and the concession of "the 
graces," as they were called. At length matters grew desperate 
between Charles and his Parliament, and in the year 1G40 he again 
gave his promise to the Irish jDCople, and he called a Parliament 
■which gave him four subsidies, 8,000 men and 1,000 horse, to fight 
against the Scotch, who had rebelled against him. Straff"ord rejoiced 
that ho had got those subsidies and this body of men, but no sooner 
did he arrive in England than the Parliament, now in rebellion, took 
him, and in the same year, 1640, Strafi"ord's head was cut off, and 
he would be a strange Irishman that would regret it. 

Meantime the people of Scotland rose in armed rebellion against 
their king. They marched into England, and what do you think 
they made by the movement? They secured full enjoyment of their 
religion, which was not Protestant, but Presbyterian. They got 
£300,000, and got for several months £850 a day to support their 
army. Then they retired into their own country, after achieving the 
purpose for which they revolted. Meantime the loyal Catholics of 
Ireland were being ground in the very dust. What wonder, I ask 
you, was it that they counselled together and said : "The king is 
afraid of the Parliament, though personally inclined to grant graces 
which he has plighted his royal word to grant. The evidence is that 
if free he would grant these concessions he has promised. But the 
king is not free," said the Irish, " for his Parliament has rebelled 



FATHER BUKKE. 257 

against him. Let us rise in tiie king's name and assert our rights." 
They rose in 1641 lilce one man — every Irishman and Catholic in 
Ireland rose. On the 23d of October, 1641, they all rose, with the 
exception of the Catholic lords of the pale. I will give you the 
reason of their rising, as recorded in the "Memoirs of Lord Castle- 
haven," a lord by no means prejudiced in fiivor of Ireland ; 

" The Irish rose for six reasons ; first, because they are generally 
looked down to as a conquered nation, seldom or never trusted after 
the manner of free-born subjects." 

Here, dear friends, is the first reason given by this English lord, 
that the Irish people rose after the English people treated them con- 
temptuously. When will England learn to treat her subjects or 
friends with common respect? When will those proud, stubborn 
Anglo-Saxons condescend to form and cherish an acquaintance with 
those around them ? I said it in ray first, repeated it in my second 
lecture, and say it in this, that it was the contempt as much as the 
hatred of Englishmen for Irishmen that lies at the root of the bitter 
spirit and antagonism that exists between those two nations. The 
second reason given by my Lord Castlehaven is that the Irish saw 
that six whole counties in Ulster were escheated to the crown and 
never restored to the natives, but bestowed by James I. on his 
countrymen, the Scotch. The third reason was that in Strafford's 
time the crown laid claim to Eoscommon and Galway, and to some 
parts of Tipperary, Wicldow and other portions of the land. The 
fourth reason was that, according to the English accounts of the day, 
war was declared against the Roman Catholics, a fact which to a 
people so fond of their religion as the Irish was no small matter, no 
small inducement to make them sober and quiet, for as a race the 
Irish people are very fond of standing by their religious tenets and 
adhering to their religious opinions. The fifth reason was that they 
saw how the Scots, by making a show of pretended grievances and 
taking up arms against their oppressors, in order to pi-ocure the 
rights to which they were justly entitled, procured the rights which 
they sought, secured the privileges and amenities due to a nation 
anxious to assert its own cause, its own independence ; they secured 
£500,000 by their visit to England. And the last reason, that they 
saw such a misunderstanding exist between the king and the Parlia- 
ment, and they consequently believed that the king would grant them 



258 TKEASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

anything that they could in reason demand, or at least as much as 
they could expect. I ask you were not those sufficient grounds for 
any claim which the Irish might have made at the time ? I appeal to 
the people of America. I sjDeak to a generous people, who know 
what civil and religious liberty means. I appeal here from this plat- 
form to-night for a people whose spirit was never broken and never 
will be. I appeal here to-night for a people not inferior to the 
Saxon, or to any other i-ace on the face of the earth, either in gifts 
of intellect or bodily energy. I appeal here to-night and I address 
myself to the enlightened instincts of this great land for a people 
who have been downtrodden and persecuted as our forefathers wei'e, 
and I think it my duty, not as a minister, but as a historian, to stand 
up and state my reasons, believing that I have sufficient justification 
to do so, and considering the fact of the accumulated wrongs that 
have been heaped upon Ireland, I don't think I would be doing jus- 
tice to myself or to m}' country if I didn't take advantage of this 
opportunity to reply to the wrongs that have been heaped upon her. 
An English Protestant writer of the times, of that very year 1641, 
says that they had sundry grievances and grounds of complaint touch- 
ing their estates and consciences, which they pretended to be far 
greater than those of the Scots, for they thouglit that if the Scotch 
acted thus to save a new religion, it was a reason that they should 
not be punished for the exercise of the old. 

There was another reason for the revolt, my friends, and a very 
potent one. It was this : Charles had the weakness and the folly — 
I cannot call it anything else — to leave at the head of the Irish 
Government two lord justices. Sir John Bernoe and Sir William 
Parsons. These were both ardent Puritans and partisans of the Parlia- 
ment. They thought that he would be embarrassed with the fight in 
the Parliament and b}' the men in Ireland, so these men lent them- 
selves to promote the resistance. Six months before this revolt broke 
out Charles sent them M'ord that he had received notice that the Irish 
were going to rise. They took no notice of the king's advertisement. 
The lords of the pale, who refused to join the Irish in the uprising, 
betook themselves to the justices in Dublin for protection, and it 
was refused them. They were refused permission to go into the 
city and escape the Irish rebellion, and the moment the Irish chief- 
tains came near the settlers of the English kins their castles were 



FATHER BURKE. 259 

declared forfeited as well as their estates, and so the Lords of Gor- 
manstown and Trimbleton and others were forced to join hands with 
the Irish, and draw their swords in the glorious cause they so 
applauded and maintained. Tliey were forced to this. Moreover, 
the Irish knew that (heir friends and fellow-countrymen were earning 
distinction and honor and glory upon all the battle-fields of Europe, 
in the service of Spain, France and Austria, and they held, uot 
without reason, that these their countrymen would help them in the 
hour of their need. Accordingly, on the 23d of October, 1G41, they 
arose. What was the first thing they did, according to Mr. Froude? 
The first thing was to massacre all the Protestants they could lay 
hands on. Well, my friends, this, as I will endeavor to show, is 
not the fact. The very first thing that their leader. Sir Phelim 
O'Neill, did was to issue a proclamation, on the verj^ day of the 
rising, in which he declares : 

" We rise in the name of our lord the king ; we rise to assert the 
power and jDrerogative of the king ; wo declare we do not wish to 
make war on the king or any one of his subjects ; we declare, more- 
ovei', that we do not intend to shed blood except in legitimate warfare, 
and that any man of our tribes that robs, plunders or sheds blood 
shall 1)6 severely punished." Did tliey keep this declaration of 
theirs? Most inviolably. I assert in the name of history that there 
was no massacre of the Protestants, and I will pi'ove it of Protest- 
ant authority. We find a despatch from the Irish Government to 
the Government in England, dated 25th of that same mouth, in which 
they give an account of the rising of the Irish people. There was 
complaint as to how the Irish dealt with their Protestant fellow- 
citizens. They took their cattle, horses and property, but not one 
single word or complaint about one drop of blood shed. And if they 
took their cattle, horses and property, you must remember that they 
were taking back what was their own. A very shoi-t time afterwaixls 
the massacre began, but \vho began it? The Protestant Ulster set- 
tlers fled from the Irish. They brought their lives with them at 
least, and they entered the town of Carrickfergus, where they found 
a garrison of Scotch Puritans. Now, in their terror the common 
people fled to Carrickfergus, and upon a little island near b}^ they 
took refuge. They congregated there for purposes of safetj' to the 
number of more than three thousand. The very first thing this garri- 



260 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

son did, they sailed out of Carrickfergus in tiie night-time and fell in 
among these innocent and unarmed people, and they slew man, 
woman and child, until they left three thousand dead bodies. And 
we have the authority of Leland, the Protestant historian, that this 
was the first massacre committed in Ireland on either side. This 
was the first massacre ! How, in the name of Heaven, can any man 
be so leai'ned as Mr. Froude and make such untruthful assertions as 
he has advanced? How can he, in the name of history, assei-t that 
these (the Irish people) began by massacring thirty-eight thousand 
of his fellow-countrymen, his fellow-religionists, when we have in 
the month of December, four months after, a commission issued to 
the Dean of Kilmore and seven other Protestant clergymen to make 
sedulous enquiry about those who were murdered? Here are the 
words of Castlehaven : 

" The Catholics were urged into rebellion, and the lord justices 
were often heard to say that the more in rebellion the more lands 
would be derived (or pilfered) from them." 

It was the old story, the old adage of James I: "Root out the 
Catholics, root out the Irish, and give Ireland to English Protestants 
and Puritans, and you will regenerate the land." But from such 
regenei'ation of my own or any other land good Lord deliver us. 
" This rebellion," says Mr. Froude, " began in massacre and ended 
in ruin." It ended in ruin the most terrible, and if it began in mas- 
sacre, Mr. Froude, you must acknowledge as a historical truth that 
the massacre was on the part of your countrymen and your chief 
justices. Thus the war began. It was a war between the Puritan 
Protestants of Ulster and other parts of Ireland, aided by constant 
supplies that came over to them from England. It was a war that 
continued for eleven years, and it was a war in which the Irish chief- 
tains had not the destinies of the nation in their own hands, but 
were obliged to fight, and fight like men, in order to try to achieve 
a better destiny and a better future for their people. Who can say 
that the Irish chieftains did hold the destinies of Ireland in their 
hands during those nine years or more, when they had to fight 
against hostile forces, one after the other, that came successively 
against them inflamed with religious bigotry, hatred and enmity that 
the world has scarcely ever seen the like of? Then Mr. Froude 
adds that these were years of anarchy and slaughter. Let us see 



FATHEU BURKE. 261 

what evidence history has of the facts. No sooner had the English 
lords of the pale — who were all Catholics — joined the Irish than 
they turned to the Catholic bishops in the land. They called them 
together in a synod, and on the 10th of May, 1642, the bishops of 
Ireland, the lords of Ireland, and the gentry and commoners and 
estated gentlemen of Ireland met together and founded what was 
called the Confederation of Kilkenny. Amongst other members, 
they selected for the Supreme Council three archbishops, two bish- 
ops, four lords and fifteen commoners. These men were to meet 
and remain in permanent session, watching over the country, making 
laws, watching over the army, and, above all, preventing cruelty and 
murder. A regular Government was formed. They actually estab- 
lished a mint and coined their money for the Irish nation. They 
established an army under Lord Mount cashcl, under Preston, and 
under the glorious Owen Roe O'Neill. During the first month they 
gained some successes. Most of the principal cities of Ireland 
opened their gates to them. The garrisons Avere carefully saved 
from slaughter, and the moment they laid down their arms their 
lives were as sacred as any man's in the ranks of the Iri.sh armies. 
Not a drop of unnecessary blood was shed by the Irish. In refer- 
ence to that Supreme Council I defy any man to prove that there 
was a single act of that Supreme Council fur the purpose of promo- 
ting bloodshed or slaughter. Now, after a few months success 
the armies of the confederation experienced some reverses. The 
English armies came upon them, and the command was given to Sir 
Charles Coote, and I want to read some of that gentleman's exploits 
for you. Sir Charles Coote's exploits in Ireland are described by 
Clarendon in these words: "Sir Charles, besides plundering and 
burning the town of Clontarf at that time, did massacre sixteen of the 
towns-people, men and women, besides suckling infants, and in that 
very same week fifty-six men, women and children in the village of 
Bullock, being frightened at what was done at Clontarf, went to sea 
to shun the fury of a party of soldiers who came out from Dublin 
under command of Col. Clifford. Being pursued by the soldiers in 
boats, they were overtaken and thrown overlioard." An order 
given out by the authorities then in power commanded to kill, slay 
and destroy all belonging to the said rebels, their adherents and 
relatives, and to destroy the towns and houses where the rebels had 



262 TREASURY OF ELOC^UENCE. 

been harbored. This order was given out at tlie Castle of Dublin, 
the 23d of February, and signed by six precious names. The Irish 
were not only pursued on the land, but on the sea ; and there was a 
law passed that if any Irishmen were found on the sea, the officers of 
his majesty's cruisers were ordered to tic them back to back and 
throw them into the sea, and the king, however much he might wish 
to do so, had no power to interfere without being charged with 
favoring the rebels of Ireland. 

The captains that committed these acts of cruelty at sea, instead 
of being punished for it, were actually rewarded, and in 1634 a 
Captain Swanley was called into the English House of Commons, 
and a vote of thanks was given him and a chain of gold worth £200 
was presented to him. Another one, a Captain Smith, got one 
worth £100. In fact, I am ashamed and afraid to mention all the 
atrocities inflicted upon the Irish people at this time. Infants Avere 
taken from their dead mothers' bosoms and impaled upon the bay- 
onets of the soldiers, and Sir Charles Coote saw one of his soldiers 
playing with a child, throwing it into the air and then spitting it 
upon his bayonet as it fell, and he laughed and said he enjoyed such 
frolic. They brought children into the world before their time by 
the Caesarian operation of the sword, and the childrcii thus brought 
forth in misery they sacriiiccd in the most cruel manner. Yes, 
such are the facts, my friends. I am afraid — I say again I am 
afraid — to tell you the hundredth part of the cruelties of those ter-' 
rible men, put l)y them upon our race. Now, I ask you to compare 
this with the manner in which the Irish troops and Irish people 
behaved. A garrison of seven hundred English surrendered at Naas, 
and the Irish commandant surrendered them up unharmed and un- 
injured, on condition that under the like circumstances the English 
would do the same with him. An Irish party capitulated a few days 
afterward. The governor of the town and all the party were arrested 
and put to death. Sir Charles Coote, coming down into Munster, 
slaughtered every man, woman, and child he met on his march, and 
among others was Philip K3^an, whom he put to death without the 
slightest hesitation. This occurs in Cart's '' Life of Ormond." Great 
numbers of the English, miraculously preserved in those days through 
the instrumentality of the Irish, were sutl'ered to go into the County 
of Cork by the courtesy and Idndness of the inhabitants of Cashel. 



FATHER BURKE. 263 

In 1649 Cardinal Eenocini was sent over by the Pope to preside 
over tlie Supreme Council of the Confederation of Killcenny, and 
about the same time neft's came to Ireland that the iUustrious Owen. 
Roe O'Neill had landed in Ireland on the coast of Ulster. This man 
was one of the most distinguished officers of the Spanish service, and 
he landed with an army with which he met tlie English general and 
engaged in a battle which raged from the earl}^ morning until the 
sunset, and the evening saw England's army flying in confusion, and 
thousands of her best soldiers were stretched upon the field, while 
the Irish chieftain stood victorious on the field which his genius and 
valor had won. Shortly after this, partly through the treachery of 
the Irish Protestants and partly through the agency of the English 
lords, the confederation began to experience the most disastrous de- 
feats, and the cause of Ireland again was all but lost. 

In the year 1(540 Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland. Mr. Froude 
says, and truly, that he did not come to make war with rose-water, 
but with the thick, warm blood of the Irish people. And JMr. Froude 
prefaces the introduction of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland by telling us 
that the Lord Protector was a great friend of Ireland, that he was 
a liberal-minded man and intended to interfere with no man's liberty 
of conscience ; and he adds that if Cromwell's policy liad been car- 
ried out in full, probably I would not be here speaking to you of 
our difficulties with Ireland to-day. He adds, moreover, that Crom- 
well had formed a design for the pacification of Ireland which would 
have made futui'e troubles there impossible. What was this design? 
Lord Macaulay tells us what this design was. Cromwell's avowed 
purpose was to end all difiiculties in Ireland, whether they arose from 
the land question or from the religious question, by putting a total 
and entire end to the Irish race, by extirpating them off the face of 
the earth. This was an admirable policy for the pacification of Ire- 
land and the ci'eation of peace ; for the best way and the simplest 
way to keep any man quiet is to cut his throat. The dead do not 
speak ; the dead do not move ; the dead do not trouble any one ; and 
Cromwell came to destroy the Irish race and the Irish Catholic faith, 
and so put an end at once to all claims for land and to all disturb- 
ances arising out of religious persecutions. But, I ask this learned 
gentleman, does he imagine that the people of America are either so 
ignorant or wicked as to accept the monstrous proposition that a mau 



264 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

who came into Ireland with such a purpose as this can be declared a 
friend of the I'eal interests of the Irish people? Does he imagine 
that there is no intelligence in America, that there is no manhood in 
America, that there is no love of freedom in America, or love of 
religion and of life in America ? And the man must be an enemy of 
freedom, of religion, and of life itself, before such a man can sympa- 
thize with the blood-stained Oliver Cromwell. These words of the 
historian I regret, for they sound like bitter mockery in the ears of 
the people whose fathers Cromwell came to destroy. But he says 
the Lord Protector did not interfere .with any man's conscience. 
(The Irish demanded libei-ty of conscience. "I inteifere with no 
man's conscience, but if you Catholics mean having priests and the 
Mass, 3'ou cannot have this, and you never will have it as long as 
the English Parliament has power to prevent it." What did these 
words mean? Grant Catholics liberty of conscience, their conscience 
telling them that their first and great duty is to hear the Mass ; grant 
them liberty of conscience, and then deny them priests to say Mass 
for them. But Mr. Froude says, "You must go easy. I acknowl- 
edge that the Mass is a very beautiful rite, but you must remember 
that Cromwell thought it to mean a system that was shedding blood 
all over Eui'ope, a system of a Church that never knew mercy, that 
slaughtered people everywhere, and therefore he was resolved to 
have none of it." Oh ! my friends, if the Mass was a symbol of 
slaughter, Oliver Cromwell would have had more sympathy with the 
Mass. And so the' historian seeks to justify cruelty in Ii'elaiid 
against the Catholics by alleging cruelty on the part of Catholics 
against their Protestant fellow-subjects in other lands- Now, this 
he has repeated over and over again in many of his writings, and at 
other times and in other places, and I may as well at once put an 
end to this. Mr. Froude says : " I hold the Catholic Church ac- 
countable for all the blood that the Duke of Alva shed in the Nether- 
lands." But Alva fought in the Netherlands against an uprising 
against the authority of the state, and the Catholic Church had 
nothing to do with Alva shedding the blood of the rebels. If they 
happened to he Protestants, that is no reason to father their blood 
upon the Catholic Church. 

Mr. Froude says that the Catholic Church is responsible for the 
blood that was shed in the massacre of St. Bartholemew by Mary de 



FATHER BURKE. 265 

Medicis in France. I deny it. Tlie woman that gave that order had 
no S3'mpathy with the Catholic Church ; she saw France divided into 
factions, and by intrigue and viliany she endeavored to stifle opposi- 
tion among the people. Tidings were sent to Rome that the king's 
life was in terrible danger and that that life had been preserved by 
Heaven, and Rome sang a " To Deum " for the safety of the king 
and not for the blood of the Huguenots. Amongst the Huguenots 
there were Catholics that 'were slain because they were of the oppo- 
site faction, and that alone proves that the Catholic Church was not 
answerable for the shedding of that blood. The blood that was shed 
in Ireland at this particular time was shed exclusively on account of 
religion ; for when, in 1643, Charles made a treaty or a cessation of 
hostilities with the Irish through the Confederation of Kilkenny, 
the English Parliament, as soon as they heard that the king had 
ceased hostilities for a time with his Irish Catholic subjects, at once 
came in and said that the war must go on; we won't allow hostilities 
to cease ; we must root out these Irish Papists, or else vi'e will incur 
danger to our Protestant friends. The men of 1643, the members 
of the Puritan Houses of Parliament in England, have fastened 
iipon the Protestant religion even to this day the formal argument and 
reason why Irish blood should flow in torrents — lest the Protestant 
religion might sufler. In these days of ours, when we are endeav- 
oring to put away all sectarian bigotry, we deplore the faults com- 
mitted by our fathers on both sides. Mr. Froude deplores that blood 
that was shed as well as I do ; but, my friends, it is a historical 
question, arising upon historic facts and evidences, and I am bound 
to appeal to history as well as my learned antagonist, and to dis- 
criminate and put back the word which he puts out — that " tolera- 
tion is the genius of Protestantism." All this I say with regret. I 
am not only a Catholic, but a priest ; not only a priest, but a monk ; 
not only a monk, but a Dominican monk, and from out the depths 
of my soul I repel and repudiate the principle of religious persecu- 
tion of any kind in any land. 

Speaking of the Mass, Mr. Froude saj's that the Catholic Church 
has learned to borrow one beautiful gem from the crown of her ad- 
versary — she has learned to respect the rights of others. I wish 
that the learned gentleman's statement would be more proved by his- 
tory, and I much desire that in speaking those words he had spoken 



266 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

historic trutlis ; but I ask him, and I ask every Protestant, in what 
laud has Protestantism ever been in the ascendant without persecut- 
ing Catholics who were around them. I say it not in bitterness, but 
I say it simply as a historic truth. I cannot find any record of history, 
any time during these ages up to a few years ago — any time when 
the Protestants in Enghmd, in Ireland, in Sweden, in Germany, or 
anywhere else, gave the slightest toleration, or even permission to 
live where they could take it from their Catholic fellow-subjects. 
Even to-day Avherc is the strongest spirit of religious persecution? 
Is it not in Protestant Sweden, Protestant Denmark? And Avho to- 
day are persecuting? I ask, Is it Catliolics? No, but Protestant 
Bismarck in Germany. Oliver Ci'omwell, the apostle of blessings 
in Ireland, landed in 1649, and besieged Drogheda, defended by Sir 
Arthur Aston and a brave garrison. Finding that their position was 
no longer tenable, they asked in the military language for the honors 
of war if they surrendered. Cromwell promised to grant them 
quarter if they would lay down their arms. They did so, and the 
promise was kept until the town was taken. When the town was in 
his hands, Oliver Cromwell gave orders to his army for the indis- 
criminate massacre of the garrison and every man, woman, and child 
in that large city. The people, when they saw the soldiers slaying 
around them on every side, when they saw the streets of Drogheda 
flowing with blood for five days, flocked to the number of one thou- 
sand aged men, women, and children, and took refuge in the great 
church of St. Peter's in Drogheda. Oliver Cromwell drew his sol- 
diers around that church, and out of that church he never let one of 
those thousand innocent people escape alive. He then proceeded to 
Wexford, where a certain connnander named Stratford delivered the 
city over to him. He massaci'cd the people there also. Three hun- 
dred of the women of Wexford with tlieir children gathered around the 
great market cross in the public square of the city. They thought 
in ^heir hearts, cruel as he was, he would respect the sign of man's 
redemption and spare those Avho were collected around it. How 
vain the thought ! Three hundred poor, defenceless women, scream- 
ing for mercy under the cross of Jesus Christ, Cromwell and his 
barl)arous demons slaughtered without permitting one to escape, 
until they were ankle-deep in the blood of the women of Wexford. 
Cromwell retired from Ireland after he had glutted himself with 



FATHER BURKE. 267 

the blood of the people, winding up his work by taking 80,000, and 
some say 100,000, of the men of Ireland and driving them down to 
the south ports of Munster, where he shipped them — 80,000 at the 
lowest calculation — to the sugar plantations of the Barbadoes, tiiere 
to work as slaves ; and in six years from that time, such was the 
treatment that they received, out of 80,000 there were only twenty 
men left. He also collected six thousand Irish boys, fair and beau- 
tiful stripling youths, put them on board ships and sent them otl'also 
to the Barbadoes, there to languish and die before they came to man- 
hood. Great God ! is this the man that has an apologist in the 
learned, the frank, the courteous, and gentlemanly historian who 
comes in oily words to tell the American people that Cromwell was 
one of the bravest men that ever lived, and one of the best friends 
to Ireland ? 

Father Burke then reviewed at length the campaign conducted 
by William of (^range in Ireland against his father-in-law, James 
the Second. When William arrived in England with 15,000 men, 
James fled. Mr. Froude asserts that he abdicated. I challenge him 
to prove it. There is no historical evidence to show that King 
James ever relinquished his title to the crown of England. But the 
English people proved false to him, and he came to Ireland, where 
the people I'ose to advocate his rights — fools that they were to es- 
pouse again the cause of a Stuart king ! The opposing armies met 
at the battle of the Boyne. Mr. Froude asserts that the Irish troops 
made no stand there. I regret that he has so far forgotten truth 
and candor as to say that the Irish race ever showed a taint of cow- 
ardice. What are the facts ? We have full and definite historical 
testimony to prove that William's army at the Boyne mustered .51,000 
veteran troops, perfect in discipline, well equipped and well clothed, 
with fifty pieces of artillery, besides mortars. The Irish army that 
opposed them was composed of 23,000 raw Irish levies, hastily or- 
ganized, imperfectly drilled, badly armed, and having only six pieces 
of ordnance altogether. The English army was connnanded by a 
lion, William of Orange, who led them on in person. The Irish 
army was commanded by a stag, iShemns, with the historic name, 
who stood on a hill two miles away from the scene of conflict, with 
a guard of picked soldiers around him ! Mr. Froude says that the 
Irish troops made no stand on that occasion. We have the testi- 



268 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

niony of nn English general who participated in the conflict, and he 
tells us that these raw Irish troops ciiarged down ie?i distinct times 
oa the overwhelming force that met them. Ten distinct times did 
the}'' rush with fiery valor upon the ranks of the bravest soldiers in 
Europe. And when compelled to retreat, they did so in good 
order, commanded by their officers, and not like men who fled be- 
fore they had struck a blow. 

Father Burke then went on to paint a vivid picture of the sieges 
of Limerick and Athloue, describing the heroism of Sarsfield and 
his companions in arms ; the memorable destruction of the bridges 
over the Shannon, twice torn down in the face of the artillery fire 
of all the English batteries ; the famous defence of "the Breach " at 
Limerick, where the women fought beside their husbands, sons and 
fathers, and he paid a noble tribute to the high honor of Sarsfield, 
who kept his plighted word in the treaty as inviolably as became an 
Irishman, while the English tore the same treaty to shreds ere it 
A\'as forty-eight hours signed. After presenting one more instance 
of Protestant toleration in the person of the Protestant Archbishop 
of Dublin, who on the Sunday succeeding the capitulation of Lim- 
ei-ick preached that historic sermon " On the sin and sinfulness of 
keeping an oath plighted to Catholics." 

I feel, my friends, that I have detained you too long upon a sub- 
ject so dreary, and so desolate a ground to travel over. I, for my 
part, never would have invited you, citizens of America, or my fel- 
low-countrymen, to enter upon such a desolate waste, to renew in 
my heart and in yours this terrible story, if Mr. Fronde had not 
compelled me to lift the veil and to show you the treatment that our 
fathers received at the hands of the English. 1 do it not at all to 
excite national animosity, and not at all to excite bad blood. I am 
one of the first w^ho would say " Let bygones be bj-gones," " Let the 
dead bury the dead ; " but if any man, I care not who he be, how 
great his reputation, how grand his name in any walk of learning 
— if any man dares to come, as long as I live, to say that England's 
treatment of the Irish was just, was necessary, was such as can re- 
ceive the verdict of the honest people of any land, or dares to say 
that either at home or abroad Irishmen have ever shown the Avhite 
feather — if I were on my death-bed, I would rise to contradict 
him. 



FATHER BURKE. 269 



Fourth Lecture. 



Ijp ADZES AND GENTLEMEN, — I have perceived in the public 
^^1 newspapers that Mr. Fronde seems to be somewhat irritated 

rby the remarks made as to his accuracy as a historian. Lest 
any word of mine might hurt in the least degree the just sus- 
ceptibilities ,of an honorable man, I beg beforehand to say that 
nothing is further from my thoughts than the slightest word either 
of personality or disrespect for one who has won for himself so high 
a name as the English historian. Therefore I merely hope that it is 
not any word which may have fallen from me, even in the heat of 
our amicable controversy, tliat has given the least offence to that 
gentleman. Just as I would expect to receive from him, or from 
any other learned and educated man, the treatment which one gentle- 
man is supposed to show to another, so do I also wish to give him 
that treatment. 

Now, my friends, we come to the matter in hand. The last thing 
I did was to traverse a great portion of our previous history in 
reviewing the statements of the English historian, and one portion I 
was obliged to leave almost untouched. One portion of that sad 
history is included in the reign of Queen Anne, that estimable lady 
of whom history records the unwomanly vice of an overfonduess for 
eating. Anne ascended the English throne in 1702, after the 
demise of William of Orange, and she sat upon that throne until 
1711. As I before remarlved, there was, perhaps, sufficient reason 
that the Roman Catholics of Ireland, trodden as they were in the 
very dust, siiould expect some quarter from the daughter of the man 
for whom they had shed their blood, and the granddaughter of the 
other Stuart king for whose cause they had fought with so much 
bravery in 1649. But the Irish Catholics got from this good Lady 



270 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Anne a return quite of another kind from wheat they might with 
reason have expected. Not content with the breach of tiie articles 
of Limerick of which her royal brother-in-law, William, had been 
guilty — not content with the atrocious penal laws which kept the 
Catholics of Ireland in grovelling misery, Anne went further. She 
appointed a new Lord Lieutenant, the Diikc of Orraond, and no 
sooner did he assume his powers than the Irish Protestants fell on 
their knees before him and begged him to save them from their foes, 
the desperate Catholics. Great God ! A people who had been 
robbed, persecuted, decimated, until there was harxlly a miserable 
remnant left, without a vote in the election of the humblest board, 
without a voice in the transaction of the humblest business, without 
power, influence, or recognized existence — and of this people the 
strong Protestant body in Ireland complained as being dangerous. 
And so well M'ere these comi)laints heard, my friends, that we find 
edict after edict coming out, declaring that no Papist shall be allowed 
to inherit land or possess land, or even have it under a lease ; declar- 
ing that if a Catholic child wished to become a Protestant, that 
moment that child became the owner and the master of his father's 
estate, and his fiither remained only a pensioner or tenant for life 
upon the bounty of his own apostate son ; declaring that if a child, 
however young, even an intiint, became a Protestant, that moment 
that child was to be removed from the guardianship and custody of 
the father, and was to be handed over to some Protestant relation. 
Every enactment that the misguided ingenuity of the tyrannical 
mind of man could suggest was put in force. "One might be 
inclined," says Mr. Mitchell, "to suppose that Popery had already 
been sutficiently discouraged, seeing that the clergy had been ban- 
ished, the Catiiolics were excluded by law from all honorable and 
lucrative employments, carefully disarmed and plundered of almost 
every acre of their ancient inheritance. But enough was not already 
done to make the Protestant interest feel secure. Consequently 
laws were sanctioned by Her Majesty Queen Anne that no Catholic 
could go near a walled town, especially Limerick or Galway. In 
order that they might be sure not to go near a walled town, they 
were to remain several miles away, as if they were lepers whose 
presence would contaminate their select and pampered Protestant 
fellow-citizens." 



FATHER BURKE. 271 

All through Queen Anne's reign police and magistrates were 
hounded on to persecute, and informers were tempted with ample 
bribes. A price was paid for executing these atrocious laws, and 
the Catholic people of Ireland were followed up as if they were 
ferocious and untamable wolves. But, my friends, Mr. Froude 
pretends to justify this persecution, and on two grounds. I may 
not hope to change Mr. Fronde's opinion, but I hope to convince 
the people of this country that there was no excuse for the shedding 
of the Irish people's blood by unjust persecution, upheld by legal 
enactment. Not a word of sympathy has he for the peojile thus 
treated — not a word of manly protest against the shedding of that 
people's blood — by unjust persecution and by the robbery of legal 
enactment ; but he says there were two reasons for the ferocious 
action of the British Government. The first is, he says, that after 
all these were only retaliation for the terrible persecution that was 
suffered by the Protestant •Huguenots in France. He says : "The 
Protestants of Ireland were only following the example of Louis 
XIV., who revoked the Edict of Nantes." Let me explain this 
somewhat to J'ou. The Edict of Nantes was a law that gave relig- 
ious liberty to the French Protestants as well as the French Catho- 
lics. It was a law founded iu justice ; it was a law founded in the 
sacred rights that belong to man ; but this law was revoked, and 
consequently the Protestants of France were laid open to persecu- 
tion. But there is this difference between the French Protestants 
and the Catholics of Ireland — the former had not their liberty guar- 
anteed to them by treaty ; the Irish Catholics had their liberty 
guaranteed them by the Treaty of Limerick, a treaty which they 
won by their own brave hands and swords. The Edict of Nantes 
was unjustly revoked, but that revocation was no breach of any 
royal word plighted to them. The Treaty of Limerick was broken 
to the Catholics of Ireland, and in the breach of it the King of Eng- 
land, the Parliament of England, the aristocracy of England, as well 
as the miserable Irish Pi'otestaut faction at home, became perjurers 
in the history of the world. Here are the words of the celebrated 
Edmund Burke on the subject of the revocation of this very edict : 
"This act of injustice," says the great Irish statesman, "which let 
loose on the monarchy of Louis XIV. such a torrent of invective 
and reproach, and which threw a dark cloud over the splendor of a 



272 . TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

most illustrious reigu, falls fiir short of the case of Ireland." Remem- 
ber that he is an English statesman, of Irish birth, and a Protestant, 
who speaks. But, my friends, the privileges which the Protestants 
of France enjoyed and lost by the revocation were of a far wider 
character than the Irish Catholics ever pi-etended to aspire to. The 
Edict of Nantes condemned those who returned to Protestantism 
having once renounced it. Its revocation did not subject the Pro- 
testants to any such persecution as that visited on the Irish Catho- 
lics. The estates of Protestants were only subject to confiscation 
when they quitted the kingdom. There was none of the complicated 
machinery I have referred to in my description of the Irish persecu- 
tion. Then it should be remembered that the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes did not by any means afiect as large a body of 
people as the penal laws in Ireland, when one portion of the popula- 
tion was living on the spoils of a much more numerous portion. 
Side by side with the Protestants of Franco compare the Irish 
people, ruined, beggared, and hunted to the death ; and the English 
historian says : " We have only served you as your coreligionists 
in France served us." The other reason he gives to justify this 
persecution was that the Irish Catholics were in favor of the Pre- 
tender. Now, to that statement I can give and do give a most 
emphatic denial. The Irish Catholics had had quite enough shed- 
ding of their own blood. They had no interest whatever in the 
succession, nor cared they one iota whether the Elector of Hanover 
or the son of James II. succeeded to the throne of England, for they 
kneAv whether it was a Hanoverian or a Stuart that ruled in England 
the prejudice of the English people would make him, whoever he 
was, a tyrant over them and over their nation. 

Thns the persecution went on, law after law being passed to make 
perfect beggary and ruin of the Irish people, until at length Ireland 
was reduced to such a state of miserj^ that the very name of an Irish- 
man was a reproach, and until at length a small number of the 
glorious race had the weakness to change their faith and to deny the 
religion of their fathers. The name of an Irishman was a reproach. 
My friends. Dean Swift was born in Ireland, and he is looked upon 
as a patriotic Irishman, yet he said : " I no more consider myself an 
Irishman because I lin]:)peDed to be born in Ireland than an English- 
man chancing to be born in Calcutta would consider himself a 



FATHER BURKE. 273 

Hindoo." He went so far as to say that he would no more think of 
taking the Irish into account than he would think of consulting 
swine. Mucaulay gloats over the state of the Catholics in Ireland, 
and even Mr. Froude views not without some complacency their 
misery. Macaulay calls them "Pariahs." He said they had no 
existence, no liberty, even to breathe in the land, and that land 
their own ! and that even the Lord Chancellor in an English court 
and in an Irish court, laying down the law of the kingdom coolly 
and calmly, said that in the eye of the law no GatJiolic iras supposed 
to exUl in Ireland. Chief Justice Eobinson made a similar declara- 
tion : " It appears plain that the law does not suppose any such per- 
son to exist as an Irish Koman Catholic ;" and yet at that very time 
we lind that Irishmen proclaimed their loyalty, and said : " Look at 
the Catholics of Ireland, how loyal they are !" Yet, according to 
Mr. Froude, we were all at this very time for the Pretender. We 
find at this very time an Irishman of the name of Phelim O'Neill, 
one of the glorious old line of Tyrone, changed his I'eligion and 
became a Protestant, but at the same time, seeing the strangeness 
that any O'Neill should be a Protestant, changed his name also and 
called himself Mr. Felix Neill. A good deal has been said and 
written about names and their sounds. Felix made his name rhyme 
with " slippery eel," and an old friar wrote some famous Latin verses 
about him, calling him "Infelix Felix, who had forgotten the ship, 
the salmon, and blood-red Hand, and blushed when called O'Neill 
in his own land!" But, my friends, the English or Protestant 
ascendancj' in Ireland, seeing how that they had got every penal 
law they could ask for, seeing that the only thing that remained for 
them was utterly to exterminate the Irish race — and they had 
nearly accomplished it, and would have killed them all, only that 
the work was too much, and that there was a certain something in 
the old blood and in the old race that still terrified them when they 
approached it — and seeing that there were so few Catholics, they 
thought that now at least their hands were fi'ee, and nothing remain- 
ed for them but to make Ireland, as Mr. Froude said, a "garden." 
They set to work and had their own Parliament, and a Catholic could 
not go near them. But they were greatly surprised to find that, 
now that the Catholics were crushed into the very earth, England 
Ijegiin to regard the very Cromwellians themselves as objects of 



274 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

hatred. What ! thpy, the sons of the Puritans ; they, the brave men 
who had slaughtered so many of the Catholic religion ; is their trade, 
commerce, and Parliament to be interfered with? Ah ! now indeed 
Mr. Froude finds tears and weeps them over the injustice and folly 
of England, because England interfered Avith the commerce and 
trade of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. These Protestants 
were first-class woolleu manufacturers, because the wool of the Irish 
sheep was so fine. The English Parliament made laws that the 
English traders were not to make any moi'c cloth to go into foreign 
markets to rival their English fellow-workmen. Mr. Froude attri- 
butes these laws, in his lecture, to the "accecZen^" that England at 
that time happened to be under the dominion of a slavish set of 
money-jobbers, and paltry, pitiful merchants — a mere accident 
according to him — an action, he says (and with some truth), which 
so discontented the Protestant faction in Ireland that many of them 
emigrated to America, and there they carried their hatred with them, 
which was one day to break up the British Empire. 

I have another theory on this gi-eat question. I hold that it was 
no accident of the hour at all that made Englaud place her restrictive 
laws upon the Irish woollen trade. I hold that it was the settled 
policy of England. These men who were now in the ascendancy 
in Ireland, imagined that because they had ruined and beggared 
the ancient race that they would, therefore, be regarded as friends 
by England. I hold that it was at that time, and in a great measure 
is to-day, the fixed policy of England to keejj Ireland poor, to keep 
Ireland down, to be hostile to Ireland, no matter who lives in it, 
whether Protestant, whether Norman, Cromwellian, or Celt. The 
law restricting the trade on woollens was passed. The planters and 
the sous of planters were beggared, simply because they had a part 
in Ireland and an interest in the welfare of the country. The in- 
imitable Swift, speaking on this very subject, quoted the fable of 
Pallas and Arachne. Pallas heard that a certain young virgin 
named Arachne could spin well. Pallas met her iu a trial of skill, 
and finding herself surpassed, changed her to a spider, and sentenced 
her to spin for ever from her own bowels and in a small compass. 
" I always pitied poor Arachne," said Swift, "and could never love 
the goddess for this cruel and unjust sentence. Ireland has been 
treated worse than Arachne. She had permission to spin from her 



FATHER BURKE. 275 

own bowels, which we have iTot." This sentence was full}- executed 
upon us by England, but with greater severity. They left us no 
chance foi' spinning and weaving. The Irish wool was famous. 
The English were outbid for it by the French. So a law was passed 
forbidding its exportation ; they took it themselves and paid their 
own price for it. The dean goes on to say that oppression makes a 
wise man mad, and that the reason wh}^ the men in Ireland are not 
mad is that they are not wise. But oppression, in time, might teach 
a little wisdom to even these. We call Swift a patriot. How little 
did he think of the oppression that beggared and ruined our people, 
that drove them from their lands, from every pleasure of life and 
from their country, and all because they had Irish names and blood, 
and would not give up the faith that their conscience told them was 
right ! Now, my friends, Mr. Froude in his lecture comes at once 
to consider the consequences of that Protestant emigration from 
Ireland. He saj's the Protestant manufacturers of Ireland and the 
workmen were discontented and came to America, and then he 
begins to enlist the sympathies of America upon the side of the 
Protestant men who came over from Ireland. If he stopped here, I 
would not have a word to say to the learned historian. When the 
Englishman claims the sympathj' of this or any other land for men 
of his blood and of his religion, if they are deserving of that sym- 
pathy, I, an Irishman, am always the first to grant it to them with 
all my heart. And therefore I do not find the slightest fault with 
this learned Englishmen when he challenges the sympathy of America 
for the Orangemen of Ireland who came over here. If these men 
deserve the sympathy of America, why not let them have it? But 
Mr. Froude went on to say that while he claimed sympathj' for the 
Protestant emigrants from Ireland, as lovers of American lil)erty, 
the Catholics, on the other hand, were crawling to the foot of the 
throne and telling King George III. that they would be only too happy 
to go out at his command and shed American blood in his cause. Is 
tliat statement true or not ? This learned historian quoted a petition 
that was presented to the king in the year 1775 by Lord Fingal and 
other noblemen. In that petition he states Lord Fingal and several 
other Catholic noblemen spoke in the name of the Irish people, pro- 
nouncing the Amei'ican Revolution an unnatural rebellion, and 
expressing a willingness to go out for the suppression of American 



276 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

liberty. First I ask at wliat time were Lord Fingal, Lord Hope, 
Lord Keniiiare, and the other Catholic lords of the pale authorized 
to speak iu tlie name of the Irish people ? Their presence in Ireland, 
although they kept the faith, was a cross, a hindrance, and a stumb- 
ling-block to the Irish nation, and the Irish people know it well. I 
do not doubt Mr. Fronde's word, but being onh^ anxious to satisfy 
myself by strict I'esearch, I have looked for this petition. I find a 
petition in Currey's collection signed by Lord Fingal and a number 
of Catholic noblemen, and in which they protest their loyalty in 
terms of the most slavish adulation . But I am not able to discover a 
single word about the American llevolution, or expi'essing auj' desire 
to destroy the liberation of America. Not one word. I have sought, 
and my friend.s have sought, in every document that was at our 
bands for this petition. I could not find it. There is a mistake 
somewhere. It is strange that a petition of so much importance 
should not have been published among the documents of the time. 
The learned historian's resources are far more ample than mine ; 
resources of time, talent, and opportunity. No doubt he will be 
able to explain this. This petition must have passed through Sir 
John Blackier's hands, then to the Lord Lieutenant, from him to 
the Prime Minister, and from him to the king. We have an old 
proverb which shows how we manage these things in Ireland : 
" Speak to the maid to speak to the mistress to speak to the master." 
Now we come to the j'ear 1775. The Catholics of Ireland had 
no voice in the government ; they could not so much as vote for a 
parish beadle, much less for a member of Parliament. And does 
Mr. Fronde tell the American people that these unfortunate people 
would not have welcomed the cry that came from across the Atlantic ? 
It was the cry of a people who proclaimed the truest liberty of men 
and of nations ; who proclaimed that no people upon the earth 
should be taxed without representation, and who gave the first blow, 
right across the face, to English tyranny that that tyrant had received 
for many years — a blow before which England reeled, and which 
brought her to her knees. Does he mean to tell J'ou, citizens of 
America, that such an event as this would be distasteful to the poor 
Irish Catholics in Ireland? It is true that they had crushed them as 
far as they could, but they had not taken the manhood out of them. 
Now, hei-e are the facts of this. Lord Howe, the English general. 



FATHER BURKE. 277 

in thiit very 3'ear of 1775, writes home to his Government from 
America, and says : " Send out German troops from England," 
"which, in other words, meant Hessians. I don't make use of this 
feeling Avith the slightest tincture of disrespect. I have the greatest 
respect for the German element in this country. Certain it is, how- 
ever, that in those days Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt — the 
people of those States — were hired out by every other country to 
fight their varied battles. " Send me out German troops," said Lord 
Howe, "for in a war against America and the American people I 
cannot depend on the Irish people, because a subjugated but unsub- 
dued race are too much in unison — they have too much sympathy 
for the people of America. The Irish," said he, "are not to be de- 
pended iqion." They sent out four thousand troops from Ireland. 
But listen, my friends, to this — but listen to this : Arthur Lee, the 
agent of America in Europe, writes home to his Government in 1777, 
and says that " the resources of our enemy are annihilated in Gei-- 
many, and their last resort is to the Catholics of Ireland. They have 
already experienced their unwillingness to go. Every man of a 
regiment raised thei-e last year obliged them to ship him tied and 
bound." Honor to the Irish Catholic soldiers' hearts that when they 
were to be sent to America to cut the throats of and scalp the 
American people they swore they would not do it, and they had to 
tie them and carry them on board. But Lee gf^es on to say, "And 
more certainly' they will desert more than any other troops." Low- 
der tells us that the war against America was not over popular, even 
in England. But in Ireland he says the jieople assumed the cause 
of America from sympathy. Let us leave Ireland and come to 
America. Let us see how the great man who was building up a 
magnificent dynasty in this countrj^ regarded the Irish people. I 
refer, my friends, to the immortal patriot and Father of his Country, 
George Washington. In 1790 George Washington received an 
address from the Catholics of America, signed by Bishop Carroll, of 
Maryland, and a great many others. In reply to that address, the 
response this magnificent man (Washington) makes, is in these 
words : "I hope to see America free and ranked among the foremost 
nations of the earth in examples of justice and liberality, and I 
presume that you, fellow-citizens, will not forget the patriotic part 
■which you Irish took in the accomplishment of our rebellion and the 



278 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

establishment of our Government, and in the valuable assistance 
which we received from a nation professing the Catholic religion." 
In the month of December, 1781, the friendly Sons of St. Patrick 
in Philadelphia elected Washington a member of their society. 
These men were great friends of the great American Father of his 
Countr3^ When his army lay at Valley Forge, twenty-seven mem- 
bers of this society subscribed between them, in 1780, 103,500 
pounds sterling of Pennsylvania currency for the American troops. 
George Washington accepted the afBliation with their society. " I 
accept with singular pleasure the ensign of so fiiendly a society as 
that of the Sons of St. Patrick, a society distinguished for the 
firmest adherence to our cause." During that time what greater 
honor could be bestowed by Washington than he bestowed upon the 
Irish? 

When Arnold, whoso name is i)anded down for eternal execra- 
tion, proved a traitor, Wasliington was obliged to choose the very 
best soldiers in the army to send to West Point. From his whole 
army they selected the celebrated Pennsylvania Line, as they were 
called, and these troops were mainly made up of Irishmen. Nay, 
more ; not merely of Protestant Irishmen, or of those who in that 
day were called Scotch Irish, which designated Mr. Froude's friends 
who emigrated from Ulster. Look over the muster-roll of this 
regiment, and we find such names as Dufl'y, McGuire, and O'Brien. 
These are names, not of Palatines, or the Scotch planters in Ireland, 
but of thoroughbred Irishmen. They fought and bled for Washing- 
ton, and be loved them. 

And now, my friends, I want to give you a little incident in the 
history of that celebrated corps (the Pennsylvania Line), to let you 
see how their hearts and hands were in relation to America. Dur- 
ing the American Revolution, as Mr. Carey informs us, these Irish- 
American soldiers, who were avenging at the same time the wrongs 
of the countr}^ of their birth and those of the country of their adop- 
tion, became disheartened at what they conceived to be the neglect 
of the Government towards them. Everywhere around they saw 
the people in wealth, and comfort and afiluence, while they them- 
selves were spilling their blood for the country which would relieve 
neither their nakedness nor their hunger. On the frozen roads 
they marked their march Avith the blood that trickled from their 



FATHER BURKE. 279 

shoeless feet, and they were half naked in the midst of winter. 
They petitioned ; they appealed to Congress ; they remonstrated ; 
and at last, stung beyond endui-ance by their suffering, they muti- 
nied. When the English commander heard this, he was overjoyed, 
and he wrote home to England, saying that the i-ebellion (as he 
called it) would soon be crushed. Lord Howe sent his agents to 
cunfor with the mutinous Pennsylvania Line, giving them a free 
card to make any terms whatever that could induce the starving 
Irish soldiers to go over to the British side. The Pennsylvania 
Line seized and bound the agents of the British general and sent 
them to the tent of Washington ! 

There was no Judas, no Arnold among them. They defied the 
tempters while they trampled on their shining gold, and these mis- 
erable wretches, the English spies, paid the forfeit of their lives 
for attempting to seduce these illustrious heroes. About Irishmen 
and Irish patriotism there was no falsehood. 

Mr. Froude seems to think that the American people look upon 
the Irish nation with a certain amount of disrespect and disesteem. 
On this question, and in reference to our people, take the testimony 
of George W. Parke Custis, the adopted son of Washington. He 
says : " The Irishmen at that time and before, even though they 
were themselves struggling for emancipation, lent all their support 
to this country." This is what the great American gentleman says 
of them in reference to an appeal which they made for aid : " And 
why is this imposing appeal from poor Ireland, whose generous sons 
in the days of our infancy, and during our struggle for independ- 
ence, shai'ed in our glory and shared in our misfortunes, and shared 
in our successes. They shared in all the storms of political strife 
that beset this once unhappy but now happy land. Yes, the Irish 
people, in the fervency of their enthusiasm, have always in their 
heart cherished one great idea of respect for this country, and in 
the magnificent outpouring of their hearts, their lips have never 
ceased to utter in time of need the musical ejaculation, 'God save 
America ! ' This is true, because we have always received from 
Ireland more help and needed assistance than we ever received from 
any European nation." Again he says : 

"To-day the grass has grown green over the grave of many a 
poor Irishman who died for America before any one here assembled 



280 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

was born. In the wai- of the Revolution in this country, Ireland 
furnished one hundred men to any single man furnished by any for- 
eign nation." 

Tbe same high authority, the adopted son of "Washington, ever 
entertained the heartiest sympathy and admiration for the veteran 
Irish soldiers of the revolution. He was accustomed to welcome 
them into his own house, there to treat them with kindness and 
esteem ; and he tells us of one aged survivor whom he invited in, 
and who, while holding the hospitable glass offered to him, said: 
"Let me drink to General Washington, who is a saint in heaven 
this day." On another memorable occasion the same eminent Ameri- 
can pays the following tribute to Ireland : 

"Recall to your minds the recollections of the heroic times when 
Irishmen were our friends, and when they were throughout the 
whole world, no matter where scattered, the friends of our interest, 
the supporters of our independence. Look to the period that tried 
the souls of men on this soil, and you will find that the sons of Erin 
rushed to our ranks, and amongst the clash of steel there was many 
a John Byrne who was not idle." He does not say Gibbs, or 
Spragg, or any Croinwcllian name of the kind. Let me tell you 
who this John Byrne was. A certain Irish prisoner was put on 
board of a ship and there left in chains in the bow of a ship, pesti- 
lence being on board; he was more than htilf starved, and was 
scarcely alive when summoned on deck to have sentence pro- 
nounced, in consequence of the cruelty inflicted on him. And then 
the English commander ofi"cred him plenty of naoncy and lilicrt}- if 
he would give up the cause which he had espoused, which cause was 
the American cause, and join the British army. With a hand 
scarcely able to lift up he opened his mouth and uttered vehemently 
with all the force he could command, "Hurrah for America ! " In 
the presence of such facts as these, testified to by no less eminent 
men than George Washington and his son, Mr. Fronde might as 
well speak to the hurricane above his head as to try to erase from 
the Irish people the sympathy of America ! Dr. McNeven, in the 
year 1809, speaking of the war with England, says in relation to 
this circumstance : 

"One of the matters charged on the Irish, and one of the many 
pretexts for refusing redress to the Catholics of Ireland was that 



FATHER BURKE. 281 

16,000 of them fought on the side of Amei-ica. Many more thou- 
sands are ready to maintain the Declaration of American Indejsend- 
ence." 

Now, my friends, thei'C are other testimonies to justify our race. 
We have the testimony of American literary gentlemen, such for 
instance as that of Mr. Paulding, and here are his words : 

"The history of Ii-eland exhibits from first to last a detail of 
the most persevering, galling, grinding, insulting, and systematic 
oppression found anywhei'e except among the helots of Sparta. 
There is not a national feeling that has not been insulted, and not 
a national right that has not been trodden imder foot. As Chris- 
tians the people of Ireland have been denied the exercise of the 
Catholic religion, venerable for its antiquity, admirable for its unity, 
and the chord by which the people are bound together in harmony. 
As men the Irish people have been deprived of the common rights 
of British subjects, under the pretext that they were incapable of 
enjoying them, which pretext had no other foundation except their 
resistance to oppression. England has denied them the means of 
improvement, and then insulted them with the imputation of bar- 
barism." 

Another distinguished American — Mr. Johnson, for instance — 
says he has never observed such severity as that exercised over the 
Catholics of Ireland. This is a gentleman whose name stands high 
in the literary record of America. Take again the unanimous 
address of the Legislature of Maryland. Those American legis- 
lators say: "A dependency of Great Britain, Ireland, is lying 
languishing under an oppression reprobated by humanity and dis- 
countenanced by just policy. It would argue ignorance of human 
rights to submit patiently to this oppression. The Senators have 
witnessed the struggle of Ireland, but with only poor success. Re- 
bellions and insurrections have gone on with but little instances of 
tranquility. America has opened her arms to the oppressed of all 
nations. No people have availed themselves of the asylum with 
more alacrity or in greater numbers than the Irish. High is the 
meed of praise which the Irish feel for the gratitude of America. 
As heroes and statesmen they honor their adopted country." Until 
such glorious words as these are wiped out of the record of Amei-i- 
can histor}^ until the generous sentiments that have inspired them 



282 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

have ceased to be a portion of the American nature, then and not 
before then, will Mr. Froude get the verdict which he seeks from 
America. I have looked through the American archives, and I 
find that the foundation of that sympathy lies in the simple fact 
that the Catholics of Ireland were heart and soul with you in 
that gloiious struggle. I find a letter from Ireland in Septem- 
ber, 1775, to a friend in New York, in which the gentleman 
writing says : " Most of the people here wish well to the cause in 
which you are engaged. They are receiving recruits throughout 
this kingdom, but the men are told that they are only going to 
Edinburgh to learn military discipline and are then to return." 
They had to tell them a lie first, well knowing that if they told 
them the truth they would never enter the ranks of the British 
army to fight against Americans. In 1775 the Duke of Riclmiond 
makes this statement: "Attempts have been made to enlist Irish 
Eoman Catholics, but the Ministry know well that these attempts 
have been unsuccessful." A certain Major Eoche was sent down 
to Cork to recruit, and he made a speech to them beginning, 
"The glorious nationality to which they belonged, the splendid 
monarcliy that governed them ; " in fact, almost the very words 
that Mr. Froude alleges to have been used by Lord Fingall were 
used by Major Eoche to these poor men, and he then held the 
golden guinea and the pound before them, but none could be 
induced to fight against their American bi'others. Writing to the 
House of Commons in the year 1779, Mr. Johnson says : "I main- 
tain that the sons of the best and wisest men in this country are on 
the side of the American people, and that in Ireland there was a 
largo majority on the side of the Americans." In the House of 
Lords, in the same year, the Duke of Eichmond says : " Attempts 
have been made to enlist the Irish Eoman Catholics. These attempts 
have proved unsuccessful." We find again the American Congress, 
in the memorable year 1775, taking action in the matter. Congress 
sent over the Atlantic waves assistance to the down-trodden Catho- 
lic Irish. 

I now come to another honored name and find the testimony of 
Verplanck. When the Catholic Emancipation was passed there was 
a banquet in New York City to celebrate the event, and this distin- 
guished American proposed a toast : " The Penal Laws : requiescat 



FATHER BURKE. 283 

in pace — may they rest in peace. And now that they are gone, I 
have a good word to say for them." What was that good word? 
Here it is : " Both in that glorious struggle for independence and in 
our more recent contest for American rights those laws gave to 
America the support of hundreds and thousands of bi'ave hearts and 
strong arms." Two of America's greatest statesmen, Henry Clay 
and William H. Seward, have given substantial proof of their sym- 
j)athy for Ii-eland, and have shown that Ireland always deserved it of 
America. I now come to another important question in this discus- 
sion — the volunteers of 1782. The cause of the formation of the 
volunteers was the determination of the English Government to send 
over to Ireland regiments of Hessians to take the place of the sol- 
diers that had been sent from there to America, and the Protestant 
Irish said that they would have none of them, and from this sprang 
the volunteers of 1782. Jlr. Froude had had little to say of them, 
and consequently in answering him he would restrict himself also in 
that regard. In 177G Ireland began to arm, but the movement was 
altogether Protestant. But we lind that the Catholics of Ireland, 
ground as they were to the dust, no sooner did they hear that their 
Protestant oppressors were anxious to do something for the old laud 
than they came to them and said : " We foi-give everything you ever 
did to us ; we leave you the land, our country, and our wealth and 
our commerce ; all we ask of you is put a gun into our hands for one 
hour of our lives." This they were refused, and, my friends, when 
the Catholic Irish — when they found that they would not be allowed 
to enter the ranks of the volunteers, they had the generosity out of 
their poverty to collect money and hand it over to clothe and feed 
the army of their Protestant fellow-citizens. Anything for Ireland. 
Anything for the man that would lift his hand for Ireland, no matter 
of what religion he was. The old generous spirit was there, the 
love that never could be extinguished was there, self-sacrificing, 
ample love for any man, no matter who he was, that was a friend to 
their native land. But after a time our Protestant friends and volun- 
teers began to think that these Catholics were capital fellows ; some- 
how centuries of persecution could not knock the manhood out of 
them, and accordingly we find in 1780 there were 50,000 Catholics 
iimongst the volunteers, every man of them with arms in his hand. 
Mr. Froude says that Grattan — the immortal Grattan, whilst he 



284z TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

wished well for Ireland, Avhilst he was irreproachable in every way, 
public or private, at this time was guilty of a great mistake ; 
that England had long ruled Ireland badly, but she had been taught 
a lesson by America, and she was now anxious to govern Ireland 
well, and no sooner was an abuse pointed out than it was immedi- 
ately remedied : and the mistake Grattan made was, instead of 
insisting on just legislation from England, he insisted on the indepen- 
dence of Ireland, and that the Irish people should make their own 
laws; that the energies of the nation, which were wasted in pohtical 
faction, could have been husbanded, and England would have been 
induced to grant just and fair laws ; but he goes on the assumption, 
my dear American friends — the gentleman goes on the assumption 
that England was willing to redress grievances, to repeal the bad 
laM's and make good ones, and he makes this assertion by saying 
that she struck off the wrists of the Irish nieix-hants the chains of 
their commercial slavery and restored to Ireland her trade. You 
remember that this trade was taken away from them. Now, I wish for 
the honor of England that she was as generous, or even as just, as Mr. 
Eroude represents her, and as he no doubt would wish her to be ; 
but we have the fact before us that in 1779, when a motion was 
made to repeal the laws restricting the commerce of Ireland, the 
English Parliament, the English king and the English Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland opposed it to the very death. They would not have 
it ; not a fetter would they strike off even of the chains of the Pro- 
testants and planters of Ireland ; and it was only when Grattan rose 
up in the Irish Parliament and insisted that Ireland should gi't back 
her trade, it was only then that England consented to listen, because 
there were 50,000 volunteers armed outside. The policy of trade 
interference still continued, and serious as it was, it was but an iota 
of the wrongs inflicted. No Irislimen were recognized but Protest- 
ant Irishmen. All others were men excluded from the bench, the 
bank, the exchange, the university, the College of Plu'sicians, and 
so on. When, then, the English king and Parliament and aristocracy 
were bound to have this thing go on, it was a righteous act for Grattan 
to rise in the Senate and sweai- before heaven that it should cease. 
As firmly Avas the oath that it should not cease retorted, and while 
Grattan worked withiu he had 50,000 volunteers drawn up in the 
streets of Dublin to give weight to his ariruments. Bitter then was 



FATHER BUEKE. 285 

the sorrow of the English when a member whose position should 
have taught him better — Hiissey cle Burgh — seconded G rattan's 
motion, and Ireland's commercial and legislative freedom were 
asserted. Protestant liigotr^^, the many-headed monstei", had now 
begun to think it would bo proper to reform the state, but Henry 
Grattan said : " I never will claim this while thousands of ray country- 
men arc in chains ; give them the power to return members to Par- 
liament, and put an end to the nomination boroughs ; let the members 
represent the people, and you will have reformed your Parliament 
and have established the liberties which the volunteers have won." 
The English would not hear of reform, because they ^vanled to have 
a, venal and corrupt Government. 

It was to this fact and not to any misstatement that we owe the 
collapse of that magnificent resurrection in the movement of 1800. 
"When William Pitt came to office his first step was to put an end to 
this difficulty and unite the two Parliaments into one. This being 
the programme, how was it to be worked out? Mr. Fronde stated 
that the rebelliou of 1798 was one of those outbursts of Irish un- 
governable passion and of Irish inconstancy. Mr. Froude said that 
rebellion rose out of the disturbance of men's minds created by the 
French revolution, which set all the world ablaze, and the flames 
spread no doubt to Ireland, and that the Irish Government was so 
hampered by the free Parliament their hands were bound. The 
rising of 1798 took place on the 23d of May, and on that day the 
United Irishmen arose. As early as 1797 the country was beginning 
to be disturbed, and during the months of February and March Lord 
Moira said in the House of Lords : 

"I have seen in Ireland the most absurd and disgusting tyranny 
that any nation ever groaned under. I have myself seen it practised 
and unchecked, and the effects that resulted were such as I have 
stated to your lordship. I have seen in that country a marked dis- 
tinction between the English and the Irish. I have seen troops full 
of this prejudice, and eveiy inhabitant of that is, and is a rebel to 
the British Government." 

Their treatment of the Irish was cruel in the extreme. They 
persecuted them until Irish blood ccmld stand no more, until Irish- 
men would h;ive been poltroons and servile cowards to have yielded 
■without a determined and forcible assertion of their rights. (The 



286 . TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

lecturer continued his description of the outrages encouraged by- 
English tyrann}' aud practised by the troops, and closed that portion 
of the narrative with the remark, which brought great outcries of 
enthusiasm from the audience) : Aud all this occurred before the 
rising actually took place, and this course was pursued with the 
view of provoking the great rebellion which followed. I ask you, in 
all this goading of a people into rcbelliou, if the infamous Govern- 
ment which then ruled Ireland was not to blame ? Were the Iris'.i 
responsible when the myrmidons of England were let loose upon 
them, violating every principle of honor aud decency? Did they not 
goad them into the rebellion of 1798? Mr. Fronde says several 
hot-headed priests put themselves at the head of the people. There 
was Father John Murphy, who came home from his duties one day 
and found his house burned, his chapel destroyed, and his unfortu- 
nate parishioners huddled about the blackened walls of the chapel. 
" Where are we to fly? " they cried. Father John Murphy got some 
pikes, put them in their hands, and himself at their head. Here you 
see, Mr. Froude, there arc two sides to every story. I have endeav- 
ored to give you some portions of the Irish side of this story, resting 
and bearing my testimony upon the records of Protestant and English 
writers, and upon the testimony which I have been proud to put- 
before you of the noble and generous American peoi^le. I have to 
apologize for the dryness of the subject and the imperfect manner in 
which I have treated it, and also for the unconscionable length of 
time which I have tried j^our patience. On next Tuesday evening 
we shall be approacliing ticklish ground — Ireland since the Union, 
Ireland to-day, and Ireland as my heart and brain tells me that she 
will be in some future time. 



FATHER BUEKE. 28T 



Fifth Lecture. 



^ADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — On this day a paragraph in a 
^^K a newspaper, the "New York Tribune," was brought under my 
^ notice, and the reading of it caused me much pain and anguish 
•i of mind. It recorded an act of discourtesy to my learned 

antagonist, Mr. Froude, supposed to have been offered by Irishmen 
in Boston. In the name of the Irishmen in America I tender to the 
learned gentlemen my best apologies. I beg to assure him for my 
Irish fellow-countrymen in this country that we are only too happy 
to offer to him the courtesy and hospitality which Ireland has never 
refused, even to her enemies. Mr. Froude does not come amongst 
us as an enemy of Ireland, but he professes that he loves the Irish 
people, and I believe him. When I read in the report of his last 
lecture, which I am about to answer to-night, that he would jield to 
no man in his love for the Irish jjeople, I was reminded of what 
O'Connell said to Lord Derby on a similar occasion. When the 
noble lord stated in the House of Lords that he would yield to no 
man in his great love for Ireland, the " Tribune " arose and said: 
"Anj' man that loves Ireland cannot be my enemy; let our hearts 
shake hands." I am sure, thei'efore, that I speak the sentiments of 
every true Irishman in America when I assure this leai-ned English 
gentleman that as long as he is in this country he will receive from 
the hands of the Irish citizens of America nothing but the same cour- 
tesy, the same polite hospitality and attention which he boasts he has 
received from the Irish people in their native land. We L'ishmen 
in America know well that it is not by discourtesy, or anything ap- 
proaching to rudeness or violence, that we expect to make our ap- 
peal to this great nation. If ever the reign of intellect and of mind 
was practically established in this world, it is in glorious America. 



288 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Every man who seeks the truth, every inaii who preaches the truth, 
whether it be a religious or a historical truth, will find an audience 
in America; and I hope that he never will find an Irishman to stand 
up and offer him discourtesy or violence l)ccause he speaks what 
he imagines to be the truth. 

So much being said in reference to the paragraph to which I have 
alluded, I come to the last of Mr. Fronde's lectures and to the last 
of my own. First, the learned gentleman, in his fourth lecture, 
told the people of America his views of the rebellion of 1782 and 
the subsequent Irish rebellion of '08. According to Mr. Froude, 
the Irish made a great mistake in 1782 by asserting the inde- 
pendence of the Irish Parliament. " They abandoned," saj^s this 
learned gentleman, "the paths of political reform, and they clamored 
for political agitation." Now, political agitation is one thing and 
political reform is another. Political reform, my friends, means the 
correction of great abuses, the repealing of bad laws, and the pass- 
ing of good measures for the welfare and well-being of a people. 
According to this learned gentlemen, the English were taught by 
their bitter American exiierience that coercion would not answer with 
the people, and that it Avas impossible to thrust unjust laws upon a 
people or nation. According to Mr. Froude, England Mas only too 
willing, too happy, in the year 1780 to repeal all the bad laws that 
had been passed in the blindness and bigotry of bygone ages, and to 
grant to Ireland real redress of all her grievances. "But the Irish 
people," says Mr. Froude, " instead of demanding from England a 
redress for their grievances, insisted upon their national and parlia- 
mentary independence. And they were fools in this," he says, "for 
that very independence led to internal contention, from contention to 
conspiracy, from conspiracy to rebellion, and from rebellion to 
tyranny." Now, I am as great an enemy of political agitation as Mr. 
Froude or any other man. I hold, and I hold it by experience, that 
political agitation distracts men's minds from more serious and more 
necessary avocations of life ; that political agitation distracts men's 
minds away from their business and from the safer pursuits of in- 
dustry, while it creates animosity and bad blood between citizens ; 
that it affords an easy and profitable employment to worthless dem- 
agogues, and that it brings very often to the surface the vilest and 
meanest element of society. All this I grant. But at the same time 



FATHER BURKE. 289 

I hold that political agitation is the only resource left to a people 
who are endeavoring to exact good laws from an unwilling and ty- 
rannical government. May I ask the learned historian what were 
the wars of the seventeenth century in France, in Germany, and in 
the Netherlands — the wars Mr. Fronde admires so much, and for 
which he expresses so much sympathy? What were they but politi- 
cal agitations, taking the form of armed rebellion, in order to extort 
from the government of the time what the people believed to be just 
measures of toleration and liberties of conscience? With these 
wars that were waged hy tlie people in armed rebellion against 
France, Spain, and in the Netherlands, against the Emperor Charles 
the Fifth, Mr. Froude has the deepest sympathy, because they zoere 
wars made bf/ Protestants against Catholic Governments. The men 
who made these wars were innovators, and they were revolutionists 
in every sense of the word. They wanted to overthrow and over- 
turn not only the altar, but the established form of government. 
But when the Irish, who alone stood in defence of their ancient re- 
ligion, their altars, their lives, their property — not their freedom, 
because that Avas long gone — though the Irish did this, the learned 
gentleman has not a word to sny, except those which express the 
gi'eatest disdain and disapprobation. And now, my friends, we come 
to consider whether Mr. Froude is right when he says "that the 
Irish only clamored for political agitation." 

Now mark ! In 1780 the Irish people, and more especially the 
Protestant portion of the Irish people, demanded of the English 
Government the repeal of certain laws that restricted and almost 
annihilated the trade and commerce of Ireland. These laws bad 
been passed under William III. ; they were levelled at the Irish 
woollen trade ; they forbid the exportation of manufactured cloth 
from Ireland, except under a duty that was equivalent to a pi"o- 
hibition tariif. They went so far as to prohibit the Irish people 
from selling the very fleece — their wool — selling it to any foreign 
power except England. England then fixed her price, and as Mr. 
Froude himself said, " although the French might be off'ering for 
Irish wool, the Irish merchant could not sell to them, but he was 
obliged to sell to the English merchant at his own price." When the 
Irish people demanded this just measure, I ask was England willing 
to grant it? Was England, as Mr. Froude says, only anxious to 



290 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

discover unjust laws in order to repeal them, and to discover griev- 
ances in order to redress them ? I answer, No ! England nailed 
her colors to the mast. She said, "I never will grant a repeal of 
restriction duties on Irish trade. Ireland is down, and I will keep 
her down." 

The proof lies here, that the English Government resisted Grat- 
tan's demand for the emancipation of Irish industry until Henry 
Grattan brought 50,000 volunteers, and the very day he rose in the 
Irish Parliament to proclaim that she demanded her rights and no 
more, the volunteers in College Green and Ste^Dhen's Green, in 
Dublin, planted their cannon right before the English House of 
Commons, and had written over the mouths of their cannon, "Free 

trade for Ireland, or " If England was so willing to redi'oss 

every Irish grievance — if the Irish people had only to say, " Look 
here, there is this law in existence ; take it away, for it is strangling 
and destroying the industry of the country " — if England was will- 
ing to take away the thing — and this Mr. Froude says she was — 
if she was willing to hear a defect only to remedy it, why, in the 
name of God — why, in that day of 1780 — why did she hold out 
until at the cannon's mouth she was compelled to yield the commer- 
cial independence of Ireland? Is it any wonder that the Irish 
people thought, with Henry Grattan, that if every measure of re- 
form was to be fought for, the country would be kept in a perfect 
state of revolution? If the Irish people would have to say, "What- 
ever we are to get, we must be ready with our torches lighted and 
cannons loaded," is it any wonder that they should have said, " It is 
far better for us to leave our Parliament free and independent to take 
up the making of our own laws, and consulting our interests, and in 
peace, quietness, and harmony, to take thought for the needs of Ire- 
land and legislate for them. And this is what Mr. Froude calls 
clamoring for political agitation. Thus we see, my friends — and 
remember this evening, fellow-countrymen, that I am moved to 
especially appeal to America, for I expect my verdict this evening as 
Mr. Froude got his, and it is not from Dr. Hitchcock. It is not the 
puny crow of a barn-door fowl, but it is the scream of the American 
eagle that I expect to hear. Thus Ave see that the action of 1782, 
by which Grattan obtained and achieved the independence of the 
Irish Parliament, did not show any innate love of Irishmen for po- 



FATHER BURKE. 291 

litical agitation ; but in tlie action of the British Government, that 
forced them on, they gave tliem only two alternatives : remain sub- 
ject to my Parliament and I will never grant you anything except 
at the cannon's mouth ; or take your own liberty and legislate for 
yourselves. Ob, Henry Grattan, you were not a Catholic, and yet 
I, a Catholic priest, here to-night call down ten thousand blessings 
on your name. It is true that that emancipated Parliament of 1782 
failed to realize the hopes of the Irish nation. Perfectly true. The 
Parliament of 1782 was a failure, I grant it. Mr. Froude says that 
that Parliament was a foilure because the Irish are incapable of self- 
legislation. It is a serious charge to make now against any people, 
my friends. I who am not supposed to be a philosopher, and be- 
cause of the habit that I wear am supposed not to be a man of very 
large mind — I stand up here to-night and I assert my conviction 
that there is not a nation or a race under the sun that is not capable 
of self-legislation, and that has not a right to the inheritance of free- 
dom. But if the learned gentleman wishes to know what was the 
real cause of that failure, I will tell him. The emancipated Parlia- 
ment of 1782, although it enclosed within its walls such honored 
names as Grattan and Flood, yet did not represent the Irish nation. 
Thei'6 were nearly three millions and a half of Irishmen in Ireland 
at that day. Three millions were Catholics and half a million 
Protestants, and the Parliament of 1782 only represented the half- 
million. Nay, more ; examine the constitution of that Parliament 
and see who they were, see how they were elected, and you will find 
that not even the half-million of Protestants were fairly represented 
in that Parliament. 

For the House of Commons held three hundred members, and of 
these three hundred there were only seventy-two elected by the peo- 
jDle ; the rest were nominees of certain great lords and certain large 
landed proprietors. A man happened to have an estate the size of a 
county, and each town sent a man to Parliament. The landlord said, 
You elect such and such a man, naming him. These places were called 
rotten boroughs, nomination boroughs, pocket boroughs, because my 
lord had them in his pocket. Have any of you Irishmen here present 
ever travelled from Dublin to Drogheda? There is a miserable vil- 
lage, a half a dozen wretched huts, the dirtiest, filthiest place I ever 
saw — and that miserable village returned a member for the Irish 



292 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Parliament. Did tliat Parliament of 1782 represent the Irish peo- 
ple? The 3,000,000 of Catholics had not so much as a vote. The 
best, the most intellectual Catholic in Ireland had not even a vote 
for a member of Parliament. Had the Parliament represented the 
Irish nation, they would have solved the problem of Home Kule in a 
sense favorable to Ireland and very unfavorable to the theories of 
Mr. Fronde. 

The Irish people knew this well, and the moment that the Parlia- 
ment of 1782 was declared independent of the Parliament of Eng- 
land, was declared to have the power of originating its own acts of 
legislation, and to be responsible to no one but the king, that 
moment the Irish clamored for reform. They said : '' Reform your- 
selves." Let the people represent them fiiirly, and you will make a 
great success of our independence. The volunteers, to their honor, 
cried out for reform. In their first meeting at Dungarvan, where 
they were 95,000 strong, the only thing they demanded was reform. 
The United Irishmen — who, in the beginning, were not a secret 
society or a treasonable society, but open, free, loyal men, embrac- 
ing the first names and the first characters in Ireland — the United 
Irishmen originated as a society embracing the first intellect in Ire- 
land for the purpose of forcing reform on the Parliament. It may 
be interesting to the citizens of America who have honored me with 
their presence this evening, it may be interesting to my Irish fellow- 
countrymen, to know what were the three precepts on which the 
United Irishmen were founded. Here they are : The first resolution 
of that society was that "the weight of English influence in the 
government of this country is so great as to require cordial union 
among all the people of Ireland to maintain that balance which is 
essential to the preservation of our liberties and to the extension of 
our commerce." 

Resolution No. 2 : "That the only constitutional means by which 
this influence of England can be opposed is by complete, cordial, 
and radical reform of the representation of the people in Parlia- 
ment." Resolution No. 3 : " That no reform is just which does 
nt)t include every Irishman of every religious persuasion." There 
you have the whole programme of the formidable Society of 
United Irishmen. I ask the people of America if there is any- 
thing treasonable, anything reprehensible, anything deserving 



FATHER BURKE. 093 

imprisonment, punislimont, or death, in such resolution? But 
England opposed and hindered the reform. England .said the 
Parliament must remain representatives of a faction and not of 
the nation — the corrupt and venal representatives of only a small 
portion of the Protestant faction. On tlio 29th of November, 1793, 
Flood introduced into the Irish Parliament a l)ill of reform. The 
moment it was read a member rose to o])pose it. That member 
was Barry Yelverton, afterward Lord Avonmore, the Attorney- 
General of Ireland, who gave to the bill an official and Ciovcru- 
ment opposition. The bill was defeated by 159 to 77. Every 
one of the 159 voted with the bribe in their pockets. Then At- 
torney-General Yelverton rose and made a motion that it be de- 
clared that this House maintain its just rights and privileges against 
all encroachments whatsoever, the just rights and privileges being 
the representation of five-sixths of the Irish people. But, says 
Mr. Froude, from confusion grew conspiracy, and from conspiracy 
grew rebellion. By conspiracy he means the Society of United 
Irishmen and by rebellion the rising of '98. In my last lecture I 
showed by the evidcuice of such illustrious men as Sir Ralph Aber- 
crombie and Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna, that the ris- 
ing of '98 was caused by the British Government, which goaded 
the Irish into rebellion. I think I have to-night shown that the 
Society of United Irishmen was not a conspiracy, but a union of 
the best intellects and best men in Ireland for a splendid and 
patriotic purpose, which they aimed to attain by loyal and legiti- 
mate means. But the United Irishmen were formed to eflcct a 
union among all Irishmen, and this was enough to excite the sus- 
picions of England, whose policy for centuries has been to main- 
tain divisions in Ireland. Well did Mr. Froude say that on the 
day when Irislimon were united they will be invincible. The 
Prime Minister of England, William Pitt, resolved on three things : 
First, to disarm the volunteers ; second, to drive the United Ii-ishmen 
into conspiracy ; and third, to force Ireland into a rebellion and have 
it at his feet. I am reviewing this historically, calmly, and with- 
out expression of feeling. But I tliink a philosopher is the last man 
in the world who ought to write history. Mr. Froude ought not to 
write history. A historian's duty is to detail dry facts, and the less 
he has to do with theories the better. I believe the learned gentle- 



294: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

man is too much of a philosoplier to be a good historian, and too 
much of a histoi'ian to be a good philosopher. The first of Pitt's 
thi-ee designs was accomplished in 1785. His next move was to 
send to Irehxnd a standing army of 15,000 men, and to obtain from 
the Irish Parliament a grant of £20,000 to enable him to organize a 
regular militia. Between the army and the militia he caught the 
volunteers in the centre and disarmed them. On the day when the 
last volunteer laid down his arms the hopes of Ireland were for 
the time laid down with him. In 1793 the Parliament passed two 
bills, the Gunpowder Bill and the Committee Bill. A public meet- 
ing of United Irishmen was held in Dublin to protest against the 
outrageous course pursued by certain agents of the Govei-nment in 
entering houses, and penetrating into private chambers, under pre- 
tence of searching for gunpowder, alleged to be concealed there. 
The Hon. Simon Butler, president, and Oliver Bond, secretary, of 
the meeting, were imprisoned five months and fined £300 for their 
part in the demonstration. The United Irishmen were obliged to 
seek refuge from persecution in secresy, and were thus forced to be- 
come conspirators. 

But the first really treasonable project in which they took part 
was in 1794, when the Rev. William Jackson, a Protestant clergy- 
man, came over to Ireland, commissioned by the French Convention. 
Mr. Jackson was a true man, but he was accompanied by a certain 
John Cocquaine, an English lawyer of London, and the agent of 
Pitt, Prime Minister of England. Thus did the Society of United 
Irishmen become the seat of conspiracy, and this was the action of 
the English Government. Before that it was perfectly legitimate 
and constitutional. Ah ! but it had an object which was far more 
formidable to the English Government than any action of treason. 
The English Government is not afraid of Irish treason, but the Eng- 
lish Government trembles with fear at the idea of Irish union. The 
United Irishmen Avere founded to promote union among Irishmen 
of every religion, and the Englishman has said in his own mind, 
" Treason is better than union ; " it will force them to become trea- 
sonable conspirators in their projects, and union will be broken up. 
It is well that you should hear, ni}' American friends, what was the 
oath that was demanded of the United Irishman. Let us suppose I 
was going to be sworn in : "I, Thomas Burke, in the presence of 



FATHER BURKE. 295 

God, do pledge myself to my country that I will use all my abilities 
and influence in the attainment of an imperial and adequate repre- 
sentation of the Irish nation in Parliament ; and as a most absolute 
and immediate necessity for the attainment of this chief good of Ire- 
land, I will endeavor as much as lies in my ability to forward and 
perpetuate the identity of interests, the union of rights, and the 
union of power among Irishmen of all religious persuasions." I pro- 
test before high Heaven to-night that, priest as I am, if I were asked 
in 1779 to take that oath, I would have taken it and tried to keep it. 
Remember, my friends, that it was no secret oath ; remember that 
it was an oath that no man could refuse to take unless he was a dis- 
honorable man and a traitor to his country. The founder of this 
society was Theobald Wolfe Tone. I admit that Mr. Tone was im- 
bued with French revolutionary ideas, but he certainly never en- 
deavored to impress these views upon the society until Mr. William 
Pitt's, the Prime Minister, influence forced that society to become a 
secret organization. The third object of the Premier of the Govern- 
ment, namely, to create an Irish rebellion — was accomplished by 
the cruelties and abominations of the soldiers, who were quartered 
upon the people and destroyed them. They violated the sanctity of 
Irish maidenhood and womanhood, burned their villages, plundered 
their farms, demolished their houses, until they made life even more 
intolerable than death itself, and compelled the people to rise in the 
rebellion of 1798. Now, you may ask what advantage was this to 
William Pitt, the Premier, to have conspiracy and rebellion in Ire- 
land ? I answer you that William Pitt was a great English states- 
man, and that meant in those days a great enemy of Ireland. He 
saw Ireland with her Parliament, free and independent, making 
her own laws, consulting her own interests, and he said to himself: 
"Ah ! this will never do. This country will grow happy and pros- 
perous ; this country will be powerful, and that won't subserve my 
purposes, my imperial designs. AVhat do I care for Ireland? I 
care for the British Empire." And he made up his mind to destroy 
the Irish Parliament and to carry the Act of Union. He knew well 
as long as Ireland was happy, peaceful, and prosperous he never 
could effect that. He knew well that it was only through the humi- 
liation and destruction of Ireland that he could doit; and, cruel 
man as he was, he resolved to plunge the kingdom into rebellion 



296 TREASUKy OF ELOQUENCE. 

and blc odshed in ordei' to cany out bis infernal English state policy. 
And yet, dear friends, especially my American friends, my grand 
jury — fori feel as if I were a lawyer pleading the case of a poor de- 
fendant, that has been defendant in many a court for many a long 
century ; the plaintifl' is a great, rich, powerful woman ; the poor 
defendant has nothing to commend her but a heart that has never 
yet despaired, a spirit that never yet was broken, and a loyalty to 
God and to man that never yet was violated by any act of treason — 
I ask you, O grand jury of America ! to consider how easy it was to 
conciliate this poor mother Ireland of mine, and to make her peace- 
( ful and happy. Pitt himself bad a proof of it in that very year of 
1794. 

Suddenly the imperious and magnificent Premier seemed to have 
changed his mind and to have adopted a policy of conciliation. He 
recalled the Irish Lord Lieutenant Westmoreland, and he sent to 
Ireland Earl Fitzwilliam, who arrived on the 4th of January, 1795. 
Lord Fitzwilliam was a gentleman of liberal mind, and a most esti- 
mable character. He felt kindly to the Irish people, and before he 
left England he made an express compact with William Pitt that if 
he were made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland he would govern the 
country with principles of conciliation and kindness. He came. He 
found in Dublin Castle a certain Secretary Cooke, a petty tyrant, 
and he found the great f unily of Beresfords, who for years and 
years had monopolized all the public ofEces and emoluments, and 
held uncontrolled sway over the destinies of Ireland. He dismissed 
them all, sent them all to the right about, and he surrounded himself 
with men of liberal minds and large, statesman-like views. He 
began by telling the Catholics of Ireland that he would labor for 
their emancipation. A sudden peace and joy spread throughout 
the nation. Every vestige of insubordination and rebellion seemed 
to vanish out of the Irish mind ; the people were content to wait ; 
every law was observed ; peace, happiness, and joy was for the time 
being the portion of the Irish people. Mow long did it last? In an 
evil hour Pitt returned to his old designs ; Earl Fitzwilliam was 
recalled on the 25th of March, and Ireland enjoyed her hopes only 
for two short months. When it was ascertained that Lord Fitz- 
william was about to be recalled, there was scarcely a parish in 
Ireland that did not send in petitions, resolutions, and prayers to 



P^ATHER BURKE. 297 

tlie English Government to leave them their Lord Lieutenant. All 
to no purpose ; the policy was changed ; Pitt had made up his mind 
to carry the Union. On the day that Lord Fitzwilliam left Dul)lia 
the principal citizens of Dublin took the horses from his carriage, 
and they drew the carriage themselves down to the water's side. 
All Ireland was in tears. "The scene," says an historian of the 
time, " was heartrending ; the whole country was in mourning." 
How easy it was, my American friends, to conciliate these people 
whom two short mouths of kindness could so have changed. Oh ! 
if only the English Government, the English Parliament, the English 
people — if they could only realize this for ever so short a time, the 
mine of affection, the glorious heart, the splendid gratitude that lies 
there in Ireland, but to which they have never appealed and never 
touched ! They have turned the very honey of human nature into 
the gall and bitterness of hate. The rebellion broke out, and it was 
defeated, and, as Mr. Fronde truly says, " the victors took away ail 
the old privileges and made the yoke heavier." By the old privi- 
leges, people of America, Mr. Fronde means the Irish Parliament, 
which was taken away. I hope, citizens of America, that this 
English gentleman Avho has come hei-e to get a verdict from you will 
be taught by that verdict that the right of human legislation is not a 
privilege, but the right of every nation on earth. Then, in the 
course of his lecture, going back to strengthen his argument, he 
says : " You must not blame England for being so hard on you 
Irishmen. She took away your Parliament, and inflicted on you a 
heavier yoke than you before bore. She could not help it, it was 
your own fault ; what made you rebel?" 

This is the argument which the learned gentleman uses. He sa3's 
the penal laws never would have been carried out only for the revo- 
lution in Ii'eland in 1600. Now, the revolution of 1600 meant the 
war that Hugh O'Neill made in Ulster against Queen Elizabeth. 
According to this learned historian, the penal laws were the result, 
effect, and consequence of that revolution. Kemcmber he fixes the 
date himself, 1600. Now, my friends, what is the record of history ? 
The penal laws began to operate in Ireland in 1534. In 1537 the 
Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, who was an English- 
man, was put into jail, and left there for denying the supremacy of 
Harry VIII. over the Church of Rome. Passing over the succeeding 



298 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

years of Harry VIII., passing over the enactments of Somerset, we 
come to Elizabeth's reign. And we find that she assembled a Par- 
liament in 1560, forty years before Mr. Fronde's revolution. Here 
is one of the laws of the Parliament: "All officers and ministers 
ecclesiastical" (that took ^ls in) "werebonnd to take the oath of 
supremacy, and bound to swear that Queen Elizabeth was Popess ; 
that she was the head of the Church ; that she was the successor of 
the Apostles ; that she was the representative of St. Peter, and 
through him of the Eternal Son of God." Queen Elizabeth ! My 
friends, all were obliged to take this oath under pain of forfeiture 
and total incapacity. Any one who maintained the spiritual su- 
premacy of the Pope was to forfeit for the first offence all his estates, 
real and personal ; and if he had no estate, and if he was not worth 
twenty pounds, he was to be put for one year in jail. For the 
second offence he was liable to the penalty of premunire, and for 
the third ofience guilty of high treason and put to death. These 
laws were made, and commissioners appointed to enforce them. Mr. 
Froude says they were not enforced. But wc actually have the acts 
of Elizabeth's Parliament, appointing magistrates and ofiicers to go 
out and enforce these laws. And these were made forty years before 
the revolution which Mr. Froude alludes to as the revolution of 1600. 
How, then, can the gentleman ask us to regard the penal laws as the 
effects of the revolution? In my philosophy, and I believe in that 
of the citizens of America, the effect generally follows the cause. 
But the English philosophical historian puts the effects forty years 
ahead of the cause, or, as we say in Ireland, he put "the car before 
the horse." But, my friends, Mr. Froude tells us, if j'ou remember, 
in his second lecture, that the penal laws of Elizabeth were occasioned 
by the political necessity of her situation. Here is his argument, as 
he gives it. He says : " Elizabeth could not afford to let Ireland be 
Catholic, because if Ireland were Catholic, Ireland must be hostile 
to Elizabeth." I may tell you now, and I hope the ladies here will 
pardon me for mentioning it, that Queen Elizabeth was not a legiti- 
mate child. Her name in common parlance is too vile for me to 
utter, or for the ladies here to hear. Sufiice it to say that Elizabeth's 
mother was not Elizabeth's father's wife. The Queen of England 
knew the ancient abhorrence that Ireland had for such a vice. He 
knew that abhorrence grew out of Ireland's Catholicity, and there- 



FATHER BURKE. 299 

fore she could not allow Ireland to remain Catholic, because Ireland 
would be hostile to her if Ireland remained Catholic. The only way 
the amiable queen could root out Catholics in Ireland was by penal 
laws — making it a felony for any Irishman to remain in Ireland a 
Catholic. Therefore the English historian says that she passed these 
laws because she could not help herself, and that she was coerced 
by the necessity of her situation. Now, I ask you, if Elizabeth, as 
he states in his second lecture, was obliged to pass these penal laws 
whether she would or not, why does he say that those penal laws 
were the effects of Hugh O'Neill's revolution? If they were the 
result of Elizabeth's necessity, then they were not the result of the 
immortal Hugh O'Neill's brave efforts. 

His next assertion is that after the American war England was 
only too well disposed to do justice to Ireland ; and the proof lies 
here : He says that " the laws against the Catholics were almost all 
repealed before 1798." Very well ; now I ask you, dear friends, to 
reflect upon what these large measures of indulgence to the Catholics 
were of which Mr. Froude speaks. Here they are : In the year 
1771 Parliament passed an act to enable Catholics to take a long lease 
on fifty acres of bog. My American friends, you may not under- 
stand this word bog. We in Ireland do. It means a marsh; it is 
almost irreclaimable ; it means a marsh which you may be draining 
until doomsday, still it will remain the original marsh. You may 
sink a fortune in it in arterial drainage, in top dressing, as we call it 
in Ireland. Let it alone for a couple of years, then come back and 
look at it, and it has asserted itself and it is a bog once moi'e. How- 
ever, the Parliament was kinder than you imagine. For while they 
granted to the Catholic the power to take a long lease of fifty acres 
of bog, they also stipulated that if the bog was too deep for a 
foundation, he might take half an acre of arable land and build a 
house. Half an acre I Not more than a half an acre. This holding, 
such as it was, should not be within a mile of any city or town. Oh ! 
no; and mark this: if half the bog was not reclaimed, that is five 
and twenty acres, within twenty-one years, the lease was forfeited ! 
Dear friends, the Scriptures tell us that King Pharaoh of Egypt was 
very cruel to the Hebrews because he ordered them to make bricks 
without straw. But here is a law that ordered unfortunate Irishmen 
to reclaim twenty-five acres of bog in twenty-one years, or else lose 



300 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

his land. Beggnrly as this concession was, you will be astonished to 
hear that the very Parliament that passed it was so much afraid of 
the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland that, in order to. conciliate 
them for this slight concession, they passed another bill granting £10 
additional to £30 already offered for every Papist priest duly con- 
verted to the Protestant religion. In October, 1777, the news 
reached England that General Burgoyne had surrendered to General 
Gates. The moment that the news reached Lord North, who was 
Prime Minister of England, he immediately expressed an ardent 
desire to relax the penal laws on Catholics. In January, the follow- 
ing year, 1778, the independence of America was acknowledged by 
glorious France. And the moment that piece of news reached Eng- 
land the English Parliament passed a bill for the relaxation of the 
laws on Catholics. In May of the same year the Irish Parliament 
passed a bill — now mark ! — to enable Catholics to lease land — to 
take a lease for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. So it seems 
we were to get out of the bog at last. 

They also in that year repealed the unnatural penal law which 
altered the succession in favor of the child who became a Protestant 
and gave him the father's property. They also repealed the law for 
the persecution of priests and the imprisonment of Popish school- 
masters. In the year 1793 they gave back to the Catholics the 
power to elect a member of Parliament, to vote, and they also gave 
them the right to certain comnn'ssions in army. That is, positively, 
all that we got. And this is what Mr. Fronde calls " almost a total 
repeal of the laws against Catholics." Wc could not go into Parlia- 
ment ; we could not go on the bench ; we ctiuld not be magistrates ; 
we were still the hewers of wood and drawers of water. And this 
loyal and benign Englishman comes and says : " Why, you fools, you 
were almost free ! " Well, people of America, if these be Mr. 
Fronde's notions of civil and religious freedom, I appeal to you for 
Ireland not to give him the verdict. "The insurrection of 1798," 
continues the learned gentleman, "threw Ireland back into confusion 
and misery, from which she was partially delivered by the Act of 
Union." The first part of that proposition I admit ; the second I 
emphatically deny. I admit that the unsuccessful rebellion of 1798 
threw Ireland back into a state of misery. Unsuccessful rebellion 
is one of the greatest calamities that can befall a nation, and the 



FATHER BURKE. 3Q1 

sooner Irishmen and Irish patriots understaud this the better it will 
be for them and their country. I emphatically deny that by the Act 
of Union there was any remedy for these miseries ; that it had any 
healing remedy whatever for the wrongs of Ireland ; that it had any- 
thing in the shape of a benefit or blessing. 1 assert that the Union 
of _l600, by which Ireland lost her Parliament, was a jiure curse for 
Ireland from that day, and uotliing else, and it is an evil that must 
be remedied if the grievances of Ireland are ever to be redressed. 
I need not dwell upon the wholesale bribery and corruption by which 
the infernal Castlereagh, that political apostate, carried that detest- 
able Act of Union. Mr. Fronde has had the good sense to pass by 
tliat dirty subject without touching him, and i can do nothing better. 
He says: "It was expected that whatever grievances Ireland com- 
plained of would be removed by legislation after the Act of Union." 
It M'as expected, it is quite true. Even Catholics expected some- 
thing. They were promised in wi-iting by Lord Cornwallis that 
Catholic emancipation would be given them if they only accepted the 
Union. Pitt himself assured them that he would not administer the 
Government unless Catholic emancipation was made a Cabinet meas- 
ure. The honor of Pitt, the honor of England, was engaged; the 
honor of the brave though unfortunate Lord Cornwallis was engaged ; 
but the Irish were left to meditate in bitterness of spirit upon the 
nature of English faith. Now let me introduce an honored name 
that I shall return to by and by. At that time the Parliament of 
Ireland was bribed with money and titles, and the Catholic people of 
Ireland were bribed by the promises of emancipation if they would 
consent to the Union. Then it was that a young man appeared in 
Dublin and spoke for the first time against the Union and in the 
name of the Catholics of Ireland, and that man was the glorious 
Daniel O'Connell. Two or three of the bishops gave a kind of tacit 
negative consent to the measure, in the hope of getting Catholic 
emancipation. I need hardly tell you, my friends, that the Catholic 
lords of the pale were only too willing to pass any measure the Eng- 
lish Government would require. O'Connell appeared before the 
Catholic Committee of Dublin. Here are his words : Remember 
they are the words of the Catholics of Ii-eland : 

" Sir, — It is my sentiment, and I am satisfied it is the sentiment 
not only of every gentleman that hears me, but of the Catholic people 



302 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of Ireland, that if our opposition to this injurious, insulting and 
hated measure of Union were to draw upon us the renewal of 
the penal laws, we would sooner boldly meet the persecution and 
oppression, which would be testimony of our virtue, and throw our- 
selves once more under the mercy of our Protestant brethren, than 
give our assent to the political murder of our country. I do know 
that although exclusive advantages may be ambiguously held forth 
to the Irish Catholic to seduce him from the sacred duty which he 
owes to his country, I know that the Catholics of Ireland still 
remember that they have a country, and that they will never accept 
of any advantage as a sect which would debase and destroy them as 
a people." 

Shade of the great departed, you never uttered truer words ! 
Shade of the great O'Connell, every true Irishman, priest and law- 
man, subscribes to these glorious sentiments, wherever that Irishman 
is this night ! 

Now, Mr. Froude goes on in an innocent sort of a way : " It is a 
strange thing after the Union was passed that the people of Ireland 
were still grumbling and complaining. They were not treated 
unjustly hard." These are his words. Good God ! People ot 
America, what idea can this gentleman have of justice? What loss 
did this Union, which he admired so much — what loss did it inflict 
on Ireland? He seems to think that it did absolutely nothing, and 
I ask you to consider two or three of the losses. First of all you 
remember, my dear friends, that Ireland before the Union had her 
own national debt, as she had her own military. She was a nation, 
And the national debt of Ireland in the year 1793 did not amount 
to three millions of money. In the year 1800, the year of the 
Union, the national debt of Ireland amounted to twenty-eight mil- 
lions of money. They increased it ninefold in six years. How? I 
will tell you. England had in Ireland, for her own purpose, at the 
time of the Union 126,500 soldiers. 

Pretty tough business that of keeping Ireland down in those days ! 
She didn't pay a penny of her own money for them. In order to 
carry the Union, England spent enormous sums of money on spies, 
informers, members of Parliament, etc. She took every penny of 
this out of the Irish treasury. There were eighty-four rotten bor- 
oughs disfranchised at the time of the Union, and England paid to 



FATIIEK BURKE. 303 

those who owned those boroughs — who had the nomination of them 
— one million two hundred thousand pounds sterling. O'Connell, 
sj^eaking on this subject, says it was really strange that Ireland was 
not asked to pay for the knife with which, twenty-two years later, 
Castlereagh cut his throat. If the debt of Ireland was swollen in 
these few years from three million to twent^'^-six million, I ask you 
to consider what followed. In January, 1801, the year of the 
Union, four hundred and fifty and one-half million was the debt of 
England, and to pay the interest on that it required seventeen mil- 
lion seven hundred and eight thousand and eight hundred pounds. 
They had to raise eighteen millions to pay the interest on four hun- 
dred and fifty millions in that year. Such was the condition of 
England. 

In the year 1817, sixteen years after, the same debt of England 
had lisen from four hundred and fifty millions to seven hundred and 
thirty-five millions, nearly double, and they had an annual debt of 
twenty-eight millions. You see they doubled their, national debt in 
sixteen years, during which Pitt waged war with Napoleon, for they 
had to pay Germans, Hessians, and all sorts of people to fight 
against France. At one time William Pitt was supporting the whole 
Austrian army. The Austrians had men, but no money. In Ire- 
land the debt in 1801 was twenty-eight and one-half millions ; con- 
sequently the annual taxation was one million two hundred and fifty 
thousand pounds. That was in 1801. In 1817 the same Irish debt, 
which sixteen years before was only twenty-eight millions, had risen 
to one hundred and twelve millions seven hundred and four thousand 
pounds, and the taxation amounted to four millions one hundred and 
five thousand pounds sterling. In other words, in sixteen years the 
debt of England was doubled, but the debt of Ireland was made four 
times as much as it was in the year that the Union passed. You 
will ask me how did that happen. It happened from the fact that 
being united to England, having lost our Parliament, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer took and kept the money, and the Irishmen kept 
the bogs. Ireland lost the privilege of keeping her money and 
accounts, and that is the way the debt accumulated against us in 
sixteen years. Ireland was so little burdened with debt at the time 
of the Union, compared with England, that the English had the pre- 
sumption to ask us to take share and shai'e alike of the taxation. 



304 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

We owed only twenty millions, and they owed four hundred and 
fifty millions. Why should we be asked to pay the interest of that 
debt? They were rich and could bear the taxation. Ireland was 
jjoor and she could not bear it. It is easier to pay interest on 
twenty pounds than on four hundred. Castlereagh, in the British 
Parliament, said that Ireland should pay one-seventh of the taxes of 
England. " We will," he said, "tax them share and share alike, so 
as to bring this (Irish) debt within one-seventh of the English 
debt." We Irish were obliged to pay interest on the four hundred 
and fifty millions that they had incurred before the Union had taken 
place. "But," says Mr. Froude, "consider the advantages to the 
nation of having this Union ; 3'ou have the same commercial privi- 
leges that the English had." To this I answer in the words of the 
illustrious, of the honest, of the high-minded John Mitchell : "It is 
true that the laws regulating trade are the same in the two islands. 
Ireland may export flax and woollen clothing to England ; she may 
import her own tea from China and sugar from Barbadoes ; the laws 
which make these penal oflences no longer exist : and why? Because 
they are no longer needed. England, by the operation of these old 
laws, has secured Ii'eland's ruin in this respect. England has a 
commercial marine ; Ireland has it to create. England hag manu- 
facturing skill, which in Ireland has been destroyed. To create or 
recover at this day these great industrial and commercial resources, 
and that in the face of wealthy rivals, is manifestly impossible with- 
out one or the other of these conditions — an immense command of 
capital, or effective duties by Government. Capital has been 
drained to England from Ireland, and she is deprived of the power 
to impose protective duties." It was these things the Union 
imposed on Ireland. "Don't unite with us, sir," says Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, when addressed ujion the subject in his day ; " we shall 
rob you." 

In the very first year this Union was fixed Mr. Forster stated in 
the English house of Parliament there was a falling ofi" of 5,000,000 
yards in the export of linen. The same gentleman, three years 
later, said that, in 1800, the net produce of the Irish revenue was 
£2,000,800, while the debt was £25,000,000. Three years later, 
after three years' experience of the condition of things, the debt had 
increased to £53,000,000, while the revenue had diminished by 



FATHER BUEKE. 305 

£11,000. Ireland was deserted; that absenteeism which was the 
curse of IreUuid in the days of Swift had so increased by that time 
that Dublin had the appearance of a deserted city, and all the cities 
of Ireland became as places in a wilderness. At this very day, in 
Dublin, the Duke of Leinster's city palace is turned into a museum 
of Irish industry. Another large palace has become a draper's shop. 
Tyrone House is a school-house, and the house of the Earl of Bec- 
tive was pulled down there a few years ago, and was rebuilt as a 
Scotch Presbyterian house for the people, and six months ago, when 
I made a visit to the place, I .was surprised to see the marvellous 
change in contrasting the present condition of the city with her 
former state. Her fashion and trade, her commercial activity and 
intellect, her enterprise and political superiority over England, are 
gone, and Ireland may fold her hands and sigh over the ruin which 
is left to her. And all this is the result of the Union. The crumb- 
ling of her liberty and the ruin of the trade of Ireland, the destruc- 
tion of her commerce, the utter uselessness of the harbors of 
Limerick and Galway, the ruin of the palaces of Dublin, announce 
to us the ascendanc}' of England and the transfer of Ireland's intellect 
elsewhere. What do we get in return for all this? Absolutely 
nothing. Every Irish question that comes now into the House at 
London is defeated ; and the moment the Irish member steps up in 
the House to present anything he is to be coughed down, and sneer- 
ed down, and crowed down, unless, indeed, he has the lungs of an 
O'Connell and turns on his opponents like an African lion, with a 
I'oar putting down their beastly bellowing. Pitt promised emanci- 
pation, and six months after the Union was passed he retired from 
office under the pretence that the king would not grant emancipa- 
tion ; but the true reason why Pitt retired was that his Continental 
policy had failed. The people of England were tired of his wars 
and were clamoring for peace. He was too proud to sign even a 
temporary peace with France ; and when he retired it was under the 
pretext that he would not be allowed to carry Catholic emancipation. 
Some time later, with the Addington administration, he returned to 
'office a second time, when he pi'oved that he was as great an enemy 
.o the Catholics of Ireland as ever poor old, fleshy, mad George IV. 
was. It was only after twenty-nine years of heroic effort that the 
great O'Connell rallied the Irish nation, and he succeeded for a time 



306 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

in uniting all the Catholics as one man, as well as a great number of 
our noble-hearted Protestant fellow-Irish. When O'Connell came 
knocking at the doors of the British Parliament with the hand of a 
united Irish people, when he sjaoke with the voice of eight millions 
of people, then, and only then, even as the walls of Jericho crum- 
bled to the sound of Josiie's trumpet, did the old bigoted British 
House of Commons treml^le, while its doors burst open to let in the 
gigantic Irishman that represented the Catholics of Ii'cland. The 
English historian caimot say that England granted Catholic emanci- 
pation willingly ; she granted it as a man would yield up a bad tooth 
to a dentist. O'Connell put the forceps into that false old mouth, 
and the old tyrant wriggled and groaned. The bigoted pi'ofligate 
who then disgraced England's ci'own shed his crocodile teai's upon 
the bill. The face that was never known to change color in the 
jjresence of any vicious deed or accusation of vice, that face grew 
pale, and George IV. wept for sorrow when he had to sign that. 
The man who beat the great Napoleon on the field of Waterloo, tlie 
man who was declared to be the invincible victor and the greatest 
of warriors, stood there with that bill in his hand, and said to the 
King of England, " I wouldn't grant it, your majesty, any more than 
you ; it is forced from you and me. You must sign this paper, or 
prepare for civil war and revolution in Ireland." I regret to be 
obliged to say it, but really, my friends, England never granted 
anything from love, from a sense of justice, or from any other 
motive than from a craven fear of civil war and serious inconvenience 
to herself. 

Now, having arrived at this point, Mr. Froude glances, in a 
masterly manner, over the great questions that have taken place 
since the day that emancipation was demanded. He speaks words 
the most eloquent and compassionate over the terrible period of '4& 
and'47 — words reading which brought tears to my eyes, words of 
compassion that he gave to the people who sufiered, for which I pray 
God to bless him and to reward him. He speaks words of generous, 
enlightened, statesman-like sympathy for the peasantiy of Irehmd, 
and for these words, Mr. Froude, if you were an Englishman ten 
thousand times over, I love you. He does not attempt to speak of 
the future of Ireland. Perhaps it is a dangerous thing for me too ; 
jet I suppose that all we have been discussing in the past must have 



FATHER BURKE. 307 

some reference to the future, fur surely the verdict that Mr. Froude 
looks for is not a mere verdict of absohition for past iniquities. He 
has come here, though he is not a Catholic — he has come to Amer- 
ica like a man going to a confession. He has cried out loudly and 
generously, "We have sinned," and the verdict which he calls for 
must surely regard the future more than the past. For how, in the 
name of common sense, can any man ask for a verdict justifying the 
rule of iniquity, the heartrending record of murder, injustice, fraud, 
robbery, bloodshed, and wrong, which we have been contemplating 
in company with Mr. Froude? It must be for the future. What 
is the future? Well, my friends, and first of all my American 
grand jury, you must remember that I am only a monk, not a maa 
of the world, and do not understand much about these things. 
There are wiser heads than mine, and I will give you their opinions- 
There is a particular class of men who love Ireland — love Ireland] 
tmly and love her sincerely. There is a particular class of men whoi 
love Ireland, and think in their love for Ireland that if ever she is. 
to be freed it is by insurrection, by rising in arms — men who hold 
that Ireland is enslaved, if you will. 

Well, if the history which Mr. Froude has given, and which I 
have attempted to review, if it teaches us anything it teaches us, as 
Irishmen, that there is no use appealing to the sword or to armed 
insurrection in Ii'cland. Mr. Froude says that to succeed there are 
two things necessaiy — namely, union as one man and a determination 
not to sheathe that sword until the work is done. I know that 
I would earn louder plaudits, citizens of America, and speak a more 
popular language in the ears of my auditors, if I were to declare my 
adhesion to this class of Irishmen. But .there is not a living man that 
loves Ireland more dearly than I do. There are those who may love 
her more fervently, and some love her with greater distinction. 
But there is no man living that loves Ireland more tenderly or more 
sincerely than I do. I prize, citizens of America, the good-will of 
my fellow-Irishmen ; I prize it next to the grace of God. I also 
prize the popularity which, however unworthy, I possess with them. 
But I tell you, American citizens, for all that popularity, for all that 
good-will, I would not compi'omise one iota of mv convictions, nor 
"would I state what I do not believe to be true ; and I say that I do 
not believe in insurrectionary movements in a country so divided as 



308 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Ireland. There is another class of Irishmen who hold that Ireland 
has a future, a glorious future, and that that future is to be wrought 
out in this way. They say, and I think with justice and right, that 
wealth acquired by industry brings with it power and influence. 
They say, therefore, to the Irish at home, "Try to accumulate 
wealth, lay hold of the industries and develop the resources of your 
country. Try in the meantime and labor to effect that blessed union 
without which there never can be a future for Ireland. That union 
can only be eflected by largeness of mind, by generosity and urban- 
ity amongst fellow-citizens, by rising aliove the miserable bigotry 
that carries religious differences and hatred into the I'clations of life 
that do not belong to religion." Meanwhile, they say to the men of 
Ireland, Try and acquire property and wealth. This can only be 
done by developing assiduous industry, and that industry can only 
be exercised as long as there is a truce to violent political agitation. 
Then these men — I am giving you the opinions of others, not my 
own — these men say in America, Men of Irish birth, and of Amer- 
ican birth but of Irish blood, wc believe that God has largely en- 
trusted the destinies of Ireland to you. America demands of her 
citizens only industiy, temperance, truthfulness, obedience 'to the 
law; and any man that has these, with the brains that God has given 
to every Irishman, is sure in this land to secure a fortune and grand 
hopes. If you are faithful to America in these respects, America 
will be faithful to you. And in proportion as the great Irish ele- 
ment in America rises in wealth, it will rise in political influence and 
power — the political influence and power which in a few years is 
destined to overshadow the whole world, and to bring about, through 
peace and justice, far greater revolutions in the cause of honor iind 
humanity than have ever been eff'ectcd by the sword. This is the 
programme of the better class of Irishmen. I tell you candidly to 
this programme I give my heart and soul. You will ask me about 
the separation from the Crown of England. Well, that is a ticklish 
question, gentlemen. I dare say yun remember that when 
Charles Edward was pretender to the crown of England during the 
first years of the House of Hanover, there was a verse which Jar 
cobite gentlemen used to give : 

" God bless the king, our noble faith's cU-fender, 

Long may he live, and down with tlie Pretender; 

But which be Pretender and which be the king, 

God bless us all, that's quite another thing! " 



FATHER BURKE. 309 

And yet, with the courage of an old monk, I'll tell you my mind 
upon this very question. History tells us that empires, like men, 
run the cycle of the j^ears of their life, and then die. No matter 
how extended their power, no matter how mighty their influence, 
no matter how great their wealth, no matter how invincible their 
army, the day will come, inevitable day, that lirings with it decay 
and disruption. It was thus with the empii-e of the Medes and 
Persians. It was thus with the empire of the Assyrians, thus with 
the Egyptians, thus with the Greeks, thus with Rome. Who would 
ever have imagined, for instance 1,500 years ago, before the Goths 
first came to the walls of Rome — who would have imagined that the 
greatest power that was to sway the whole Roman Empire would be 
the little unknown island lying out in the Western Ocean, known 
only by having been conquered by the Romans — the JJUima ThuJe, 
the Tin Island in the far ocean. This was England. Well, the 
cycle of time has come to pass. Now, my friends, England has 
been a long time at the top of the wheel. Do you imagine she will 
always remain there ? I do not want to be one bit more disloyal than 
Lord jNIacaulay ; and he descriljes a day when a traveller from New 
Zealand "will take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge and 
sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." Is the wheel of England rising, or 
is it falling? Is England to-day what she was twenty years ago? 
England twentj' years ago, in her first alliance with Napoleon, had 
a finger in every pie in Europe. Lord John Russell and Lord 
Palmerston were busy bodies of the first order. England to-day 
has no more to say to the affairs of Europe than the Emperor of 
China has. You see it in the fact — I am only talking philosoph- 
ically — you see it in the fact that a few months ago the three great 
Emperors of Germany, Austria £ind Russia came together in Berlin 
to fix the map of Europe, and they did not even have the courtesy 
to ask England in to know what she had to say about it. The army 
of England to-day is nothing — a mere cipher. The German Em- 
peror can bring his 1,000,000 men into the field. England can 
scarcely muster 200,000. An English citizen, a loyal Englishman, 
wrote a book called "The Battle of Dorking," in which he describes 
a German army marching on London. This Englishman was loyal ; 
and why should I be more loj'al than he ? England's navy is noth- 
ing. Mr. Reed, chief constructor of the British army, has written 



310 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

an article in a London paper, in whicli he declares and proves that 
at this moment the British fleet would be afraid to go into Russian 
waters, not being able to meet the Russians. Why should I be more 
loyal than Mr. Reed ? 

An empire begins to totter and decay when it abandons its out- 
lying provinces, as in the case of the Roman Empire when it aban- 
doned Britain. England to-day says to Canada and Australia : " Oh I 
take your Government into your own hands ; I don't M'ant to be 
bothered with it any more." England that eighty years ago fought 
for the United States bitterly, as long as she could put a man into 
the field. How changed it is ! Secondl}^ an empire is crumbling 
to decay when she begins to buy off her enemies, as in the case of 
the Roman Empire when she began to buy off the Scythians, the 
Dacians, and other barbaric forces that were rising upon her. Eng- 
land a few days ago was presented with a little bill by America. 
John Bull said : " Jonathan, I owe you nothing " ; and he buttoned 
up his pocket and swore he wouldn't pay a cent. But America 
said; "Well, John, if you don't like to pay, you can take one of 
these," presenting a pair of swords, and putting the hilt of one of 
them into Johnny Bull's hand. "Take whichever you like, John." 
John Bull paid the bill. My friends, it looks very like as if the day 
of Lord Macaulay's New Zealander was rapidly approaching. In 
that day my position is, Ireland will be mistress of her own desti- 
nies, with. the liberty that will come to her, not from man, but from 
God, whom she never deserted. There is another nation that under- 
stands Ireland, whose statesmen have always spoken words of brave 
encouragement, of tender sympathy, and of manly hope for Ireland 
in her dark daj^s, and that nation is the United States of America — 
the mighty land placed by the Omnipotent hand between the far 
East on the one side, to which she stretches out her glorious arms 
over the broad Pacific, while on the other side she sweeps with up- 
lifted hand over the Atlantic and touches Europe. A mighty land, 
including in her ample bosom untold resources of every form of com- 
mercial and mineral wealth ; a mighty land, with room for three hun- 
dred millions of men. The oppressed of all the world over are 
flying to her more than imperial bosom, there to find liberty and the 
sacred right of civil and religious freedom. Is there not reason to 
suppose that in that future which we cannot see to-da}^ but which 



FATHER BURKE. 311 

lies before us, that America will be to the -whole world what Rome 
was in the ancient days, what England was a few years ago, the 
great storehouse of the world, the great ruler — pacific ruler by jus- 
tice of the whole world, her manufacturing power dispensing from 
out her mighty bosom all the necessaries and all the luxuries of life 
to the whole world around her? She maybe destined, and I believe 
she is, to rise rapidly into that gigantic power that will overshadow 
all other nations. 

When that conclusion does come to pass, what is more natural 
than that Ireland — now I suppose mistress of her destinies — should 
turn and stretch all the arms of her sympathy and love across the 
intervening waves of the Atlantic and be received an independent 
State into the mighty confederation of America? Mind, I am not 
speaking treason. Remember I said distinctly that all this is to 
come to pass after Macaulay's New Zealander has arrived. Amer- 
ica will require an emporium for her European trade, and Ireland 
lies there right between her and Europe with her ample rivers and 
vast harbors, able to shelter the vessels and fleets. America may 
require a great European storehouse, a great European hive for her 
manufactures. Ireland has enormous water-power, now flowing 
idly to the sea, but which will in the future be used in turning the 
wheels set to these streams by American-Irish capital and Irish in- 
dustry. If ever that day comes, if ever that union comes, it will 
be no degradation to Ireland to join hands with America, because 
America does not enslave her States ; she accepts them on terms of 
glorious equality ; she respects their rights, and blesses all who cast 
their lot with her. Now I have done with this subject and with Mr. 
Froude. I have one word to say before I retire, and that is, if dur- 
ing the course of these five lectures one single word personally 
ofl"ensive to that distinguished gentleman has escaped my lips, I take 
this word back now ; I apologize to him before he asks me, and I 
beg to assure him that such a word never came wilfully from ray 
mind or from my heart. He says he loves Ireland, and I believe 
according to his lights he does love Ireland ; but our lights are veiy 
diflerent from his. But still the Almighty God will judge every 
man according to his lights. 



SPEECHES. 

" / 

John Philpot Curran, 



[313] 



On Attachments, 



February 24, 1785. 

Eenewed efforts were made lu 17S4 for Reform. In consequence of a requisi- 
tion, Henry Reilly, Esq., Sheriff of the county of Dublin, summoned his bailiwick 
to the court-house of Kilmainham, for the 15th of October, 1784, to elect member.s 
to a national congress. For this Mr. Reilly was attached by the King's Bench, on 
a crown motion, and, on the 24th of February, 1785, the Right Hon. "William 
Browulow moved a vote of ceusure on the judges of that court for the attachment. 

f'vl HOPE I may say a few words on this great subject, without 
g^ disturbing the sleep of any right honorable member [the Attor- 
X torney-General * had fallen asleep on his seat] : and yet per- 
i haps, I ought rather to envy than blame the tranquility of the 
right honorable gentleman. I do not feel myself so happily tem- 
pered, us to be lulled to repose by the storms that shake the land. 
If they invite rest to any, that rest ought not to be lavished on the 
guilty spirit. I never more strongly felt the necessity of a perfect 
union with Britain, of standing or failing with her in fortune and 
constitution, than on this occasion. She is the parent, the arche- 
type of Irish liberty, which she has preserved inviolate in its grand 
points, while among us it has been violated and debased. I now 
call upon the house to consider the trust reposed in them as the 
Great Inquest of the people. 

I respect judges highly ; they ought to be respected, and feel 
their dignity and freedom from reprehension, while they do what 
judges ought to do ; but their stations should not screen them, 
when they pass the limit of their duty. Whether they did or not, 

* John Fitzgibbon. He was made Solicitor-General on the 9th of November, 
1783, and on the 20th of December, 1783, succeeded Yelverton as Attorney-General. 
This latter office he retained till he was raised to the Chancellorship, on the 12th of 
August, 1789, thus making way for Arthur Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwardeu. 



31(3 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

is the quostion. This house is the judge of those judges ; and it 
would betray the people to tyrauny, and abdicate their representa- 
tion, if it do not act with probity and firmness. 

In their proceedings against Eeilly, I think they have trans- 
gressed the law, and made a precedent, which while it remains, is 
subversive of the trial l)y jury, and, of course, of liberty. I regard 
the constitution, I regard the judges, three of that court at least ; 
and, for their sakes, I shall endeavor to undo what they have done. 

The question is whether the court has really punished its own 
officer for a real contempt ; or whether it has abused that power, for 
the illegal end of punishing a supposed offence against the state, by 
a summary proceeding, without a trial by jury. 

The question is plain, whether as a point of constitution, or as of 
law ; but I shall first consider it in the former view. When I feel 
the constitution rocking over my head, my first anxiety is to 
explore the foundation, to see if the great arches that support the 
fabric have fallen in ; but I find them firm, on the solid and massy 
principle of Common Law. The principle of legal liberty is, that 
offence, and trial, and punishment, should be fixed ; it is sense, it is 
Magna Charta — a trial by jur}', as to fact, an appeal to judges as 
to law. 

I admit Attachment an exception to the general rule, as founded 
in necessity, for the support of courts, in administering justice, by 
a summary control over their officers acting under them ; but the 
necessity that gave rise to it is also the limit. If it were extended 
farther, it would reach to all criminal cases not capital ; and in the 
room of a jury, crimes would be created by a judge, the party 
accused by him, found guilty by him, punished by the utter loss of 
his liberty and property for life, by indefinite fine and imprison- 
ment without remedy or appeal. If he did not answer he was 
guilty ; even if he did, the court might think or say it thought, the 
answer evasive, and so convict him for imputed prevarication. 

The power of Attachment is wisely confined by the British laws, 
and practised within that limit. The crown lawyers have not pro- 
duced a single case where the King's Bench in England have gone 
beyond it. They have ranged through the annals of history; 
through every reign of folly and of blood ; through the proud domi- 



JOHN r. CURRAN. 317 

nation of the Tudors, and the blockhead despotism of the Stuarts, 
without finding a single case to support their doctrine. 

I consider the office of sheriff as judicial and ministerial. Reilly's 
offence did not fall within any summary control, in cither capacity. 
It was not a judicial act, it was not colore officii. An act colore 
officii must either be an act done by the actual exercise of an abused 
or of an usurped authority — neither of which can it be called ; for 
where the sheriff summons his county, he does it by command, by 
authority, under pain of fine and imprisonment to those who dis- 
obey. 

Was the appointment of a meeting any such active exertion of 
authority ? Does any man suppose he was obliged to attend ? that 
he would be fined if he refused to attend? No. Did the sheriff 
hold out any such colorable authority? Clearly not. The con- 
trary : he explained the purpose of the intended meeting ; he stated 
at whose instance he appointed such meeting ; and thereby showed 
to every man in his senses that he was not affecting to convene 
them by color of any compulsive authority. 

If, then, there was any guilt in the sheriff's conduct it was not 
punishable by Attachment. They who argue from its enormity, are 
guilty of a shabby attempt to mislead men from the question, which 
is not whether he ought to be punished at all, but whether he had 
been punished according to law. 

You have heard no man adduce a single case to support their 
assertion ; but we have the uniform practice of the King's Bench in 
England in our favor, the uniform pi'actice, both there and here, 
dui'ing these last years. Had they not meetings there and here? 
Did not the crown receive petitions and addresses from such assem- 
blies? Why, during that time, was there no motion for an Attach- 
ment in either kingdom. 

If an English Attorney-General had attempted such a daring out- 
rage on public liberty and law, he must have found some friend to 
warn him not to debase the court, and make it appear to all man- 
kind as the odious engine of arbitrary power ; not to put it into so 
unnatural a situation, as that of standing between the people and the 
crown, or between the people and their representatives. 

I warn him not to bring public hatred on the government, by the 
-adoption of au illegal prosecution. If he show himself afraid of 



318 TREASURY OF PXOQUENCE. 

proceeding against offenders b}^ the oi'dinary mode, then offenders 
will be exalted by arbitrary persecution of them ; they will become 
suffering patriots, from being mere j^etty offenders ; their cries will 
T)ecome jiopular. Let him be warned how he leads the court into 
an illegality, which the commons can never endure. No honest 
representative can sacrifice his fame and his duty, by voting in sup- 
port of a proceeding subversive of liberty. I should shrink from 
the reproach of the most insignificant of my constituents, if that 
constituent could say to me — "When thou sawest the thief of the 
constitution, thou consentedst unto him." 

Such would be the ciuition suggested to an English Attorney- 
General ; and, accordingly, we find no instance of his ever ventur- 
ing on such a measure. 

Without case then, or precedent, or principle, what is the support 
of such a conduct here ? — the distinction of a judge ? And what is 
that distinction ? It is different in different men ; it is different in 
the same man at different times ; it is the folly of a fool and the fear 
of a coward ; it is the infiimy of the young, and the dotage of age : 
in the best man it is very weakness that human nature is subject to ; 
and in the worst, it is very vice. Will you then tell the people that 
you have chosen this glorious distinction in the place of fixed laws^ 
fixed offences, and fixed punishments, and in the place of that great 
barrier between the prerogative and the people — -Trial by Jur\'? 

But it is objected that the resolution is a censure on the judges 
and a charge of corruption : — I deny it, and I appeal to j'our own 
acts. 

Mr. Curran then called to the clerk, who read from the journals a vote of censure 
passed upon Mr. Justice Robinson, for imposing a fine illegally in a county, when 
on circuit, without view or evidence. 

Was your resolution founded on any corruption of that judge? 
No : you would, if so, have addressed to remove him. I called for 
the resolution, therefore, not to charge him with guilt — I am per- 
suaded he acted merely through error ; but to vindicate him, to 
vindicate you, and to exhort you to be consistent. You thought a 
much smaller violation of the law was deserving your reprob;ition. 
Do not abandon yourselves and your country to slavery, by suffer- 
iuir so much a grosser and more dansjerous trans2:ression of the con- 



JOHN P. CURRA2^. 319 

stitution, to become a precedent for ever. In tenderness even to 
the judges, interpose. Their regret, which I am sure they now feel, 
on reflection, cannot undo what they have done : their hands cauuot 
wash away what is written in their records ; but you may repair 
whatever has been injured : — if your friend had unwillingly plunged 
a dagger iuto the breast of a stranger, would you prove his inno- 
cence by letting the victim bleed to death? The constitution has 
been wounded deeply, but, I am persuaded, innocently ; it is 30U 
only, who, by neglecting to interpose, can make the consequences 
fatal, and the wound ripen into murder. 

I would wish, I own, that the liberty of Ireland should be sup- 
ported by her own children ; but if she is scoi'ned and rejected by 
them, wheu her all is at stake, I will implore the assistance even of 
two strangers ; I will call on the right honorable Secretary to sup- 
port the principles of the British constitution. Let him not render 
his administration odious to the people of Ireland, by applying his 
influence in this house, to the ruin of their personal freedom. Let 
him not give a pretence to the enemies of his friend in a sister 
country, to say that the son of the illustrious Chatham is disgracing 
the memory of his great father ; that the trophies of his Irish ad- 
ministration are the introduction of an inquisition among us, and the 
extinction of a trial by jury ; let them not say that the pulse of the 
constitution beats only in the heart of the empire, but that it is dead 
in the extremities. 

Mr. Curran concluded with declaring his hearty concurrence in the 
resolution proposed. 

The Attorney-General (Fitzgibbon), in a speech of much personality, opposed 
Curran's motion. 

Mr. Curran in reply — I thank the right honorable gentleman for 
restoring me to my good humor, and for having, with great liberality 
and parliamentary decency, answered ray arguments with personality. 
Some expressions cannot heat me, wheu coming from persons of a 
certain distinction. I shall not interrupt the right honorable gentle- 
man in the fifth repetition of his speech. I shall prevent his argu- 
ments by telling him that he has not in one instance alluded to Mr. 
Eeilly. The right honorable gentleman said I had declared the judges 
guilty ; but I said no such thing. I said, if any judge was to act in 



320 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the manner I mentioned, it would be an aggravation of his guilt. 
The right honorable gentleman has said, that the house of commons 
had no right to investigate the conduct of judges ; if so, I ask the 
learned Sergeant why he sits in that chair ? I ask why the resolution 
has been just read from the journals ? The gentleman has called mo 
a babbler ; I cannot think that was meant as a disgrace, because, ia 
another Parliament, before I had the honor of a seat in this house, 
but when I was in the gallery, I heard a young lawyer named Babbler. 
I do not recollect that there were sponsors at the baptismal font ; nor 
was there any occasion, as the infant had promised and vowed so 
many things in his own name. Indeed I tind it difficult to reply, for 
I am not accustomed to pronounce panegyrics on myself; I do not 
know well how to do it ; but since I cannot tell you what I am, I 
shall tell you what I am not : — I am not a man whose respect in 
person and character depends upon the importance of his office ; I 
am not a young man who thrusts himself into the foreground of a 
picture, which ought to be occupied by a better figure ; I am not a 
man who replies with invective, when sinking under the weight of 
argument ; I am not a man who denied the necessity of a parliamentary 
reform, at the time he proved the expediency of it, by reviling his 
own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger ; 
and if there be any man who can apply what I am not to himself, I 
leave him to think of it in the committee, and to contemplate it when 
he goes home. — Debates, Vol. IV., pp. 402-10. 

The resolution was negatived by 143 to 71. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 321 



Orde's Commercial Propositions. 



June 30th, 1785. 

Was the interest of Ireland to be subordinate to England, when her parliament had 
ceased to be so? Tliis Mr. Pitt tried to adjudicate against, by deceit, in 1785, and 
failing, he resolved to reach the same end by abolishing our parliament, and this he 
"unhappily accomplished in 1800. 

There is no political event from 1782 to the Union, of greater importance than the 
•discussion of Orde's Propositions. In Grattan's Memoirs, vol. iii., and in Seward's 
Collectanes Politica, valuable elements of a judgment on this matter will be found. 
I tried to sum up the history of the transaction ia the " Citizen " Magazine for Sep- 
tember, 1841, in reviewing Grattan's Memoirs. On looking over that paper, I find 
I cannot condense the description of the propositions and their fate, given there, so 
I shall simply copy it : — 

" Partly from a belief that protection alone would secure a beginning to trade, and 
partly out of retribution on England, an attempt was made in April, 1784, to impose 
severe import duties on manufactures. Mr. Gardiner's motion for that purpose was 
negatived in parliament by nearly four to one; not that the Commons were the ene- 
mies of protection, but the creatures of England. 

"In May in the same year, 1784, a proposal of Mr. Griffith's, for inquiru on the 
•commercial intercourse between Britain and Ireland, was talcen out of his liauds by 
government. He desired to show that Irish trade should be protected from English 
■competition : the opposite was the direction given to the inquiry by the adopting 
parents; he sought to inquire how Ireland might be served even at the expense of 
England ; they, how England might be pampered on the spoil of Ireland. Accord- 
ingly, they solved it in their own way, and on the 7th of February, 1783, Mr. Orde, 
the Chief Secretary, announced, and on the 11th, moved the eleven propositions on 
trade, commonly called the Irish propositions, to distinguish them from the twenty 
proposed as amendments thereon by Pitt, a few mouths after, called the English 
propositions, though, in fact, both were English in contrivance and purport. There 
were four principles established in the Irish propositions : — 1st, that the taxes upon 
all goods, foreign and domestic, passing between the two countries, should be equal. 
Secondly, that taxes on foreign goods should be always higher than on the same 
jirticles produced in either island. Thirdly, that these regulations should be unal- 
terable. Fourthly, that the surplus of the hereditary revenue (hearth tax, and 
certain customs and excises, over £050,000 a year) should he paid over to the English 
treasury, for the support of the Imperial (English?) navy. The first principle went 
to place a country with immense capital, great skill, and old trade on the same foot- 



322 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ing with one without any of these, and therefore went to ruin the latter, unless 
private enterprise came forward, as before, and, supplying the defects of the law, 
rescued the country from the alien, the aristocrat, and the placeman. The second 
article sacrificed tlie realities of French, Spanish and American trade, tlien increas- 
ing, to (the profits?) of English competition. The third and fourth were assump- 
tions of a power beyond law-making ; they abdicated legislation. The last, espe- 
cially, paid for English strength — that is, Irisli misery; and purchased piotection, 
that is, slavery, at a price, which, as Grattau afterwards said, might amount to any 
share of the national revenue, to which a tricking financier wished to raise it. To 
pay black mail was to lay Ireland at the mercy of England, yet not secure her 
against other foreign states by any lasting or efl'ectual means. An old treaty, or the 
convenience of a couqueror, are no substitutes for the safety, of which national 
and home passions and interests are the true guardiaus. Your own sword Is a 
better protection than another's shield; for if he be endangered, you are left un- 
armed and undefended. Besides, between nations, guardianship means plunder; 
and the ward is an impoverished drudge. Yet this plan was proflered as a boon, 
and, what is stranger still, it was paid for as such — £140,000 of new taxes were 
asked for, and voted in return for the prospective favors of tlie minister. Flood 
almost alone opposed it; he asked for time to let himself ^ to let the nation reflect 
on the propositions; he exposed some of the propositions; he expressed confi- 
dence in only a few. . . ." 

" On tlie 22nd of February, Pitt, in a speech full of hopes for this country, moved 
the resoUitiou wliich declared that Ireland should be allowed the advantages (i. e., 
competition) of British commerce as soon as she had 'irrevocably' granted to 
England an 'aid' (i. e., tribute) for general defence. Thus we were promised an 
equivocal boon at tlic cost of independence. Such was the generosity of Pitt, and 
it was too much for the opposition, too much for North and the Tories, too much 
for Fox and tlio wiiigs. They were in opposition, and they saw in English jealousy 
to Ireland a sure resource against the ' heaven-born minister.' He, to be sure, had 
not done good to Ireland, but he gravely promised to serve her, and this was sus- 
picious, at least, especially when coming from one who still had a character. None 
of the leaders cared for Ireland, nor were they bigoted against her; but they flung 
her in each other's faces. . . ." 

"Fox obtained adjournments; and all England ' spoke out,' from Lancashire to 
London, from Gloucester to York. During the twenty years of Pitt's supremacy, 
the liberal opposition had his apostacy from principle, his suppression of opinion in 
England, his hostility to freedom all over the globe. Ills b'oody and constant wars, 
— all these had they, and what came nearer still to the soul (stomacli) of Eugiaud, 
they had his exiiausting taxation to bring against him; yet lie repelled them witliout 
difficulty, even led liy Fox, wlien armed witli these grievances. In 1785 the opposi- 
tion united under a more exciting banner-cry, 'Jealousy of Ireland,' and England 
rallied benealh their flag. Pitt was borne back, but he was skilful and unscrupulous ; 
he saw his danger, and sounded a parley; he submitted to some of their terms; he 
succeeded in retaining all that was adverse to the Irish constitution, sufi'ered the loss 
of all that could be by any ingenuity supposed serviceable to Irish trade, and returned 
the act approved of by him in this form. The opposition kept up a little clamor about 
the invasion of Irish rights ; it served for declamation, but England was now con- 
tent ; there being no fear of benefit to Ireland, the intended wrongs were soon for- 
gotten in England. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 323 

*' We have before us the Report of the Committee of Trade and Plantations on 
the equalization of duties. That report includes the examinations of the chief man- 
ufacturers of England, and a more valuable evidence could not be got of English 
dread aud jealousy, and assumption; fearing that free trade may make Ireland able 
to compete with them, they deprecate her prosperity, and assume a right to control 
her improvement. They all assert the success of the Irish non importation agree- 
ment." 

" The eleven propositions had been increased in England to twenty, each addition 
a fresh injury. Half the globe, namely, all between Magellan and Good Hope, was 
(by articles 3 and 9) interdicted to Ireland's ships ; interdicts were also laid on 
certain goods. The whole customs legislation of Ireland was taken away by clauses 
which forced her (by article 4) to enact (register) all navigation laws passed or to 
i)c passed by England ; (by articles 5 aud 8) to impose all colonial duties that Eng- 
land did ; (by G and 7) to adopt the same system in custom houses that England did ; 
aud finally, (by 17 and 18) to recognize all patents and copyrights grauted to Eng- 
land." 

The propositions were returned thus changed, aud on Thursday, the 30th of June, 
1785, the Right Honorable Thomas Orde moved the adjournment of the house till 
Tuesday fortnight. Against this Cnrrau spoke as follows : — 



^^ CAN easily excuse some inconsistencies in the conduct of the 
^^ right honorable Secretary [Orde] ; for some accidents have 
X hefiiUen him. When we met last, he desired us to adjourn 
I for three weeks ; we did so ; and now he wants above a fort- 
night more ; but will that help forward the business before the 
house? Will it expedite the progress of the bill, to say, "Let us 
wait till the packet comes in from England, and perhaps we shall 
have some news about the propositions?" Did the British minister 
act in this manner? Xo : when he postponed, from time to time, 
the consideration of the propositions, he did not postpone the other 
business of the house; he did not say, let it wait till the packet 
comes from Duljlin. This the Irish minister is forced to do : I say 
forced, for I am sure it is not his inclination ; it must distress him 
greatly, and I sincerely feel for, and pity his distres.s. 

When we had the eleven propositions before us, we were charmed 
with them. Why? — because we did not understand them ! Yes, 
the endearing word reciprocity rang at every corner of the streets. 
We then thought that the right honorable gentleman laid the propo- 
sitions before us by authority ; but the English minister reprobates 
them as soon as they get to England, and the whole nation repro- 
bates them. Thus, on one hand we must conclude, that the English 
minister tells the Irish minister to propose an adjustment, and, 



324 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

when it goes back, alters every part ; or, that the Irish minister 
proposed it without any authority at all.' I am inclined to believe 
the latter ; for it would add to the gentleman's distress to suppose 
the former. 

Now let us mark another inconsistency into which the i-ight hon 
orable gentleman is driven, no doubt against his will. Time to 
deliberate was refused us, when we had something to deliberate 
upon ; and now, when we are told we have nothing before us to 
consider, we are to have a fortnight's recess, to enable us to think 
about nothing. And time, indeed, it will take, before we can tliink 
to any purpose. It will take time for the propositions to go through, 
and, perhaps, to be again altered in the house of lords. It will take 
time for them to be reconsidered in the British commons. It will 
take time for them to come over here. It will take time for us to 
consider them, though that time is likely to be very short. It will 
take time to send them back to England. It will take time for them 
to be returned to us again ; and then time will be required to carry 
them into execution. 

But a rumor hath gone abroad, of a studied design to delay the 
discussion of this business until there shall be no members in town. 
Away with such a suspicion ; I think too honorably of the right 
honorable gentleman ; though I should be glad to hear him say 
there is not even an idea of the base design of forcing them down 
our throats. 

July 23, 1785. 

Mr. Secretary Orde having tliia day moved that the house do adjourn to Tuesday 
se'nniglit, with a proviso that the further delay of a week or more might be needed, 
Mr. Curran rose and spoke to the following effect : — 

Sir, the adjournment proposed is disgraceful to parliament, and 
disgraceful to the nation. I must explain myself by stating a few 
facts, though they relate to a subject that I own I cannot approach 
but with reluctance. The right honorable gentleman, early in the 
session, produced a set of propositions, which he said he was 
authorized to present to us, as a system of final and permanent com- 
mercial adjustment between the two kingdoms. As a compensation 
for the expected advantages of this system, we were called upou to 
impose £140,000 a year on this exhausted country. Unequal to our 
strength, and enormous as the burden was, we submitted ; we were 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 325 

■willing to strain every nerve in the common cause, and to stand or 
fall with the fate of the British empire. But what is the event? I 
feel how much beneath us it would be to attend to the unauthentica- 
ted rumors of what may be said or done in another kingdom ; but it 
would be a ridiculous affectation in us not to know that the right 
honorable gentleman's system has been reprobated b^^ those under 
whose authority he was supposed to act, and that he himself has 
been deserted and disavowed. 

I cannot, for my own part, but pity the calamity of a man who is 
exposed to the contempt of the two countries as an egregious dupe, 
or to their indignation as a gross impostor ; for even he himself now 
abandons every hope of those propositions returning to this house in 
the form they left it. On the contrary, he now only hopes that he 
may be able to bring something forward that may deserve our appro- 
bation on some future day. He requests an adjournment for ten 
days, and he promises that he will give a week's notice when the yet 
undiscovered something is to be proposed, which something he prom- 
ises shall be agreeable to this nation, and authorized by the Eng- 
lish minister. 

On what his confidence of this is founded I know not ; unless he 
argues, that because he has been disavowed and exposed in his past 
conduct by his employers, he may rely on their supporting him in 
future. But however the right honorable gentleman may fail in 
drawing instruction from experience or calamity, we ought to be 
more wise ; we should learn caution from disappointment. 

"We relied on the right honorable gentleman's assurances — we 
found them fallacious ; we have oppressed the people with a load of 
taxes, as a compensation for a commercial adjustment; — we have 
not got that adjustment; we confided in our skill in negotiation, 
and we are rendered ridiculous by that confideuce. We looked 
abroad for the resoui'ces of Irish commerce, and we find that they 
are to be sought for only at home, in the industry of the people, in 
the honesty of parliament, and in our learning that negotiation must 
inevitably bring derision on ourselves and ruin on our constituents. 
But you are asked to depend on the right honorable gentleman's 
regard for his own reputation. When the interest of the people is 
at stake, can we be honest in reposing on so despicable a security ? 
Suppose this great pledge of the right honorable gentleman's charac- 



326 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ter should chance to become forfeited, where will you look for it? 
When he sails for England, is it too large to carry with hiiu? Or, 
if you would discover in what parish of Great Britain it may be 
found, will the sacrifice be an atonement to a people who have al- 
ready been betrayed by trusting to so contemptible a pledge ? 

See, then, what we do by consenting to this short adjournment ; 
we have been abused already and we neglect every other duty, in 
order to solicit a repetition of that abuse. If this something should 
arrive at all, it will be proposed when the business of the country 
will engage every county member at the assizes ; for, as to his 
week's notice, it either cannot reach him in time, or, if it should, he 
cannot possibly obey it. Is it, then, our wish to have a new sub- 
ject, of such moment as a contract that is to liind us forever, con- 
cluded in half a house, and without even a single representative for 
a county in the number? Is it wise to trust to half the house, in a 
negotiation in which the wisdom of the whole has been already 
defeated ? 

But what is the necessity that induces us to acquiesce in a measure 
of so much danger and disgrace ? Is this nation brought to so abject 
a condition by her representatives, as to have no refuge from ruin 
but in the immediate assistance of Great Britain ? 

Sir, I do not so far despair of the public weal ; oppressed as we 
were, we found a resource for our constitution in the spirit of the 
people ; abused as we now find ourselves, our commerce cannot fail 
of a resource in our virtue and industry, if we do not sufler oui'- 
selves to be diverted from those great and infallible resources, by a 
silly hope from negotiation, for which we are not adapted, and in 
which we can never succeed. And if this great hope still is left, 
why fill the public mind with alarm and dismay ? Shall we teach 
the people to think, that something instantly must be done to save 
them from destruction? Suppose that something should not, can- 
not be done, may not the attempt, instead of uniting the two coun- 
tries, involve them as its consequence in discord and dissension ? 

If your compliance with the right honorable gentleman's requisi- 
tion do not sink the people into despair of their own situation, does 
it not expose the honor and integrity of this house to suspicion and 
distrust? For, what can they suppose we intend by this delay? 
The right honorable gentleman may find it worth his while to secure 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 327 

his continuance in office by an expedient, however temporaiy and 
iueffectiKil ; but, sir, if we are supposed to concur in such a design, 
our character is gone witli the people ; for, if we are honest, it can 
be of no moment to us whether this secretary or that minister shall 
continue in office or not. 

I know it has been rumored that the right honorable gentleman 
may take advantage of a thin house to impose upon this country the 
new set of resolutions that have passed the commons of Great Bri- 
tain. I do not suspect any such thing, nor would I encourage such 
a groundless apprehension. I do not think it would be easy to find 
a man who would stand within the low-water mark of our shore, and 
read some of those resolutions above his breath, without feeling some 
uneasiness for his personal safet}' ; neither can I think if a foi-eign 
usurpation should come crested to our bar, and demand from the 
treachery of this house a surrender of that constitution which has 
been established by the virtue of the nation, that we would answer 
such a requisition by words. 

But, sir, though the people should not apprehend such extreme 

perfidy from us, they will be justly alarmed, if they see us act with 

• needless precipitation ; after what is past, we cannot be surprised 

at not meeting with the most favorable interpretations of our 

conduct. 

On great objects, the magnitude of the ideas to be compared may 
•cause some confusion in the minds of ordinary men ; they will there- 
fore examine our conduct by analogy to the more frequent occurren- 
ces of common life ; such cases happen every day. Will you permit 
me to suppose a very familiar one, by which our present situation 
may be illustrated to a common mind. 

I will suppose then, sir, that an old friend that you loved, just 
recovering from a disease, in which he had been wasted almost to 
death, should prevail upon you to take the trouble of buying him a 
horse for the establishment of his health ; and I the more freely pre- 
sume to represent you for a moment in an office so little correspond- 
ing with the dignity of your station, from a consciousness that my 
fancy cannot put you in any place, to which you will not be followed 
by my utmost respect. I will, therefore, suppose that you send for 
a horse-jockey, who does not come himself, but sends his foreman. 
Says the foreman. Sir, I know what you want ; my master has a 



328 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

horse that will exactly match your friend ; he is descended from 
Rabelias' famous Johannes Caballus, that got a doctor of physic's 
degree from the College of Rheims ; but your friend must pay his 
price. My master knows he has no money at present, and will 
therefore accept his note for the amount of what he shall be able to 
earn while he lives ; allowing him, however, such moderate subsist- 
ence as may prevent him from perishing. If you are satisfied, I 
will step for the horse and bring him instantly, with the bridle and 
s;iddle, which you shall have into the bargain. But, friend, say 
you, arc you sure that you are authorized to make this bargain? 
What, sir, cries the foreman, would you doubt my honor? Sir, I 
can find three hundred gentlemen who never saw me before, and yet 
have gone bail for me at the first view of my face. Besides, sir, 
you have a great pledge ; my honor, sir, my renown is at stake. 
Well, sir, you agree — the note is passed; the foreman leaves you, 
and returns without the horse. What, sir, where is the horse? 
Why, in truth, sir, answers he, I am sorry for this little disappoint- 
ment, but my mistress has taken a fancy to the horse so j^our friend 
cannot have him. But we have a nice little mare that will match him 
better ; as to the saddle he must do without that, for little master 
insists on keeping it : however, your friend has been so poor a fel- 
low, that he must have too thick a skin to be much fretted by riding 
barebacked ; besides the mare is so low that his feet will reach the 
ground when he rides her ; and still further to accommodate him, 
my master insists on having a chain locked to her feet, of which lock 
my muster is to have a key, to lock or unlock, as he pleases ; and 
your friend shall also have a key, so formed that he cannot unlock 
the chain, hut with which he may double-lock it, if he thinks fit. 
What, sirrah ! do yor, think I'll betray my old friend to such a fraud ? 
Why really, sir, you ai"c impertinent, and your friend is too peevish j 
it was only the other day that he charged my master with having: 
stolen his cloak, and grew angry, and got a ferrule and spike to his 
statf. Why, sir, you see how good-humoredly my master gave back, 
the cloak. Sir, my master scorns to break his word, and so do I r 
sir, my character is your security. Now, as to the mare, you are- 
too hasty in objecting to her, for I am not sure that you can get her t 
all I ask of you now is, to wait a few hours in the street, that I may 
try if something may not be done ; but let me say one word to you itt 



JOHN P. CLTRRAN. 329 

confidence — I am to get two guineas if I can bring your friend to be 
satisfied with wliat we can do for him, now, if you assist me in this, 
you shall have half the money ; for, to tell you the truth, if I ftiil in 
my undertaking, I shall either be discharged entirely, or degraded to 
my former place of helper in the stable. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, as I do not presume to judge of your feelings 
by my own, I cannot be sure that you would beat the foreman, or 
abuse him as an impudent, lying impostor; I rather think you would 
for a moment be lost in reflecting, and not without a pang, how the 
recitude of your heart, and the tenderness of your head, had exposed 
you to be the dupe of improbity and folly. But, sir, I know you 
would leave the wretch who had deceived you, or the fool who was 
deceived by his master, and you would return to your friend. And 
methinks you would say to him, we Iiave been deceived in the course 
we have adopted ; for, my good friend, you must look to the exei- 
tions of your own strength for the establishment of your health. 
You have great stamina still remaining — rely upon them, and they 
will support you. Let no man persuade you to take the ferrule or 
spike from your staflF. It will guard your cloak. Neither quarrel 
with the jockey, for he cannot recover the contents of the note, a& 
you have not the horse ; and he may yet see the policy of using you 
honestly, and deserving to be your friend. If so, embrace him, and 
let your staif be lifted in defence of your common safety, and in the 
meantime, let it be always in readiness to defend yourself. 

Such, sir, is the advice you would offer to your friend, and which 
I would now off"er to this house. There is no ground for despairing ; 
let us not, therefore, alarm the people. If a closer connection with 
Great Britain is not nowpracticaljle, it maybe practicalile hereafter ; 
but we shall ruin every hope of that kind by precipitation. I do 
therefore conjure gentlemen not to run the risk of forcing us, at a 
week's notice, to enter on a sul)ject on which every man in the nation 
ought to be allowed the most unlimited time for deliberation. I dO' 
conjure them not to assent to a measure that can serve nobody but 
the proposer of it ; that must expose the members of this house to 
the distrust of their constituents, and which may, in its consequen- 
ces, endanger the harmony of two kingdoms, whose interests and 
fortunes ought never to be separated — Debates, Vol. V., pp. 299— 
304. 

The adjournment was, however, carried. 



330 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

August 11th, 1785. 

Mr. Curran entered the house late, and spoke to the following effect : — 

He demanded of the secretary what was become of the eleven pi-o- 
positions of the Irish Parliament, as of them only that Parliament 
could treat. He had no fear, he said, that the house would be so 
base, or the nation so supine, as to suffer any others to be the 
grounds of a treaty ; and as to the fouilh resolution of the British 
Parliament, he understood too well what the conduct of the house 
would be, was anything to be founded on it, to fear from that quar- 
ter. But he again desired to know what was become of the eleven 
propositions, as it was impossible to negotiate, until the fote of tliem 
was known. He said, though it seemed to be the present fashion 
to urge the house forward, without giving the least time for reflec- 
tion or consideration, yet he would not suppose the house Avould, in 
this instance, precipitate itself into the absurdities of an address, 
without knowing upou what ground ; much less could he fear that it 
would fall into the greatest of all absurdities, the negotiating by a bill 
— binding themselves, and leaving the otherparties at liberty. How- 
ever, as to-morrow was so near, he would listen to what the Right Hon- 
orable Secretary had to offer, convinced that no man would dare to 
bring forward anything founded on the British resolutions. — Debates, 
Vol. v., p. 328. 

August 12th, 1785. 

On this day Orde moved his bill, and was opposed by Grattan and Flood, in 
speeches of eminent force and briUiaucy. Curran's speech is short, and his exhaus- 
tion seems to have beeu excessive : — 

I am too much exhausted to say much at this hour [six o'clock] on 
the subject. My zeal has survived my strength. I wish my present 
state of mind and body may not be ominous of the condition to which 
Ireland would be reduced, if this bill should become a law. I can- 
not therefore, yield even to my weakness — it is a suliject which 
might animate the dead. [He then took a view of the progress of 
the arrangement, and arraigned the insidious conduct of the admin- 
istration.*] In Ireland it was proposed by the minister; in Eng- 
land it was reprobated by the same minister. I have known 

* So in the original report. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 331 

children learn to play at canls, by playing the riglit hand against 
the left ; I never before heard of a negotiation being carried on in 
that way. A bill is not a mode of negotiating ; onr law speaks only 
to ourselves — binds only ourselves ; it is absurd, therefore, to let 
the bill proceed. The commercial part is out of the question ; for 
this bill portends a surrender of the constitution and liberty of Ire- 
land. If we should attempt so base an act, it would be void, as to 
the people. We may abdicate our representation, but the right re- 
mains with the people, and can be surrendered only by them. We 
may ratify our own infamy ; we cannot ratify their slavery. I fear 
the British minister is mistaken in the temper of Ireland, and judges 
of it by former times. Formerly the business here was carried on by 
purchase of majorities. There was a time when the most infamous 
measure was sure of being supported by as infamous a majority, but 
things have changed. The people are enlightened and strong, they 
■will not bear a surrender of their rights, which would be the con- 
sequence, if they submitted to this bill. It contains a covenant to 
enact such laws as England should think proper ; that would anni- 
hilate the Parliament of Ireland. The people here must go to the 
bar of the English house of commons for relief; and for a circuit- 
ous trade to England we are accepting a circuitous constitution. 

It is different totally from the cases to which it has been com- 
pared, the settlement of 1779, or the Methuen treaty; there all was 
specific and defined, here all is future and uncertain. A power to 
bind externally, would involve a power also of binding internally. 
This law gives the power to Great Britain, of judging what would 
be a breach of the compact, of construing it; in fact, of taxing us 
as she pleased ; while it gives her new strength to enforce our obe- 
dience. In such an event, we must either sink into utter slavery, or 
the people must wade to a re-assumption of their rights through 
blood, or be obliged to take refuge in a union, which loould be the an- 
nihilation of Ireland, and lahat, I suspect, the minister is driving at. 
Even the Irish minister no longer pretends to use his former 
language on this subject ; formerly we were lost in a foolish ad- 
miration on the long impedimented march of oratoric pomp, with 
which the Secretary displayed the magnanimity of Great Britain. 
That kind of eloquence, I suppose, was formed upon some model, 
but I suspect that the light of political wisdom is more easilv rp 



332 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

fleeted than the heat of eloquence ; yet we were in raptures even 
with the oratoiy of the honorable gentleman. However, he now 
has descended to an humble style ; he talks no more of reciprocity, 
no more of emporium. 

[He then went into general observations, to show that this 
treaty would give no solid advantages to Ireland, but was a revoca- 
tion of the grant of 1779.] He said — I love the libert}^ of Ireland, 
and shall therefore vote against the bill, as subversive of that liberty. 
I shall also vote against it as leading to a schism between the two 
nations, that must terminate in a civil war, or in a union at best. I 
am sorry that I have troubled you so long, but I feared it might be 
the last time I siiould ever have an opportunity of addressing a free 
parliament; and, if the period is approaching, when the boasted con- 
stitution of Ireland will be no more, I own I feel a melancholy am- 
bition to deserve that my name be enrolled with those who endeavored 
to save it in its last moment. Posterity will be grateful for the last 
efiort, though it should have failed of success. — Debates Vol. Y.^ 
pp. 421, 2, 3. 

The introduction of the bill was carried by 127 to 108. 

August 15th, 1785. 

Mr. Orde, on presenting the bill, abandoned it for the session, and for ever. 
Thereon, Flood moved the following resolution ; — 

" Resolved — -That we hold ourselves bound not to enter into any cng.igement to 
give up the sole and exclusive right of tlie parliament of Irehmd to legislate for 
Ireland in all cases whatsoever, as well externally as commercially and internally." 

Curran supported him : — 

I shall support the resolution proposed by the honorable member, 
because I think it necessary to declare to the people, that their 
rights have not been solely supported by one hundred and ten 
independent gentlemen, but that, if eight or ten of them had been 
absent, those who had countenanced the measure, would have 
abandoned every idea of prosecuting it further. 

It has ever been the custom of our ancestors, when the constitu- 
tion has been attacked, to take some spirited step for its support. 
Why was Magna Charta passed? It was passed not to give freedom 
to the people, l)ut because the people were already free. Why was 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 333 

the repeal of the 6th of George I.? Not to give independence to 
the men of Ireland, but because Ireland was in itself an independent 
nation. This i-esolution does not go to give rights, but to declare 
that we will preserve our rights. We are told to be cautious how 
we commit ourselves with the Parliament of Gi'eat Britain ; whether 
this threat carry with it more of prudence or timidity, I leave gentle- 
men to determine. I rejoice that the cloud which had lowered over 
us has passed away. I have no intention to wound the feelings of 
the minister, by triumphing in his defeat ; on the contrary, I may be 
said to rise with some degree of self-denial, when I give to others an 
opportunity of exulting in the victory. 

The opposition in England has thrown man}' impediments in the 
way, but I shall remember, with gratitude, that the opposition there 
has supported the liberties of Ireland. When I see them reprobat- 
ing the attacks made upon the trial by jury, when I see them sup- 
porting the legislative rights of Ireland, I cannot refrain from giving 
them my applause. They well know that an invasion of the liberty 
of Ireland would tend to an attack upon their own. 

The principle of lilicrty, thank heaven ! still continues in those 
countries : that principle M'hich stained the fields of Marathon, stood 
in the pass of Thermopylae, and gave to America independence. 
Happy it is for Ireland, that she has recovered her rights by a vic- 
tory unstained by blood — not a victory bathed in the tears of a 
mother, a sister, or a wife — not a victory hanging over t!ie grave 
of a Warren or a Montgomery, and uncertain whether to triumph in 
what she had gained, or to mourn over what she had lost ! 

As to the majority, who have voted for bringing in the bill, the 
only way they can justify themselves to their constituents, is by 
voting for the resolution. As to the minority, who have saved the 
countr}^ they need no vindication ; but those who voted for tiic iu- 
trodiiction of the bill must have waited for the committee, to show 
the nation that they would never assent to the foui'th proposition. 
That opportunity can never arrive — the bill is at an end. The 
cloud that had been collecting so long, and threatening to break in 
tempest and ruin on our heads, has passed harmlessly away. The 
siege that was drawn round the constitution has been raised and the 
enemy is gone — " Juvat ire, et Dorica castra, desertosque videre 
locos;" and they might now go abroad without fear, and trace the 



334 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

dangers they had escaped : here was drawn the line of circumvalla- 
tion, that cut them off forever from the eastern world ; and there 
the corresponding one, that inclosed them from the west. 

Nor let us forget, in our exultation, to whom we are indebted for 
the deliverance. Here stood the trusty mariner [Mr. Conolly] on 
his old station, the mast-head, and gave the signal. Here [Mr. 
Flood] all the wisdom of the state was collected, exploring your 
weakness and your strength, detecting every ambuscade, and point- 
ing to the hidden battery, that was brought to bear on the shrine of 
freedom. And there [Mr. Grattan] was exerting an eloquence more 
than human, inspiring, forming, directing, animating, to the great 
pui'poses of your salvation. 

Bat I feel that I am leaving the question, and the bounds of mode- 
ration ; but there is an ebullition in great excesses of joy, that almost 
borders on insanity. I own I feel something like it in the p\-ofuse- 
ness with which I share in the general triumph. 

It is not, however, a triumph which I wish to enjoy at the expense 
of the honorable gentleman who brought in the bill, I am willing to 
believe with the best intention. Whatever I may have thought be- 
fore, I now feel no trace of resentment to the honorable gentlemen. 
On the contrary, I wish that this day's intercourse, which will pro- 
bably be our last, may be marked, on our part, with kindness and 
respect. I am for letting the right honorable gentleman easily down ; 
I am not for depressing him with the triumph, but I am for calling- 
him to share in the exultation. 

Upon what principle can the gentlemen who supported the pre- 
vious question defend their conduct, unless it was in contradiction to 
the general rule of adhering to measures, not to the man? Here it 
is plain they were adhering to the man, not to the measure ; the 
measure had sunk, but the man was still afloat. Perhaps they think 
it decent to pay a funeral compliment to his departure ; yet I warn 
them how they press too eagerly forward ; for, as there cannot be 
many bearers, some of them might be disappointed of the scarf or 
the cypress. I beseech them now to let all end in good humor, and, 
like sailors who have pursued different objects, when they get into 
port, shake hands with harmony. — Debates, Vol. V., pp. 453, 4, 5. 

Flood withdrew his motion, the House adjourned, and Orde's Propositions merged 
in a secret design for a Union. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 335 



Pensions. 



March 13th, 1786. 

The endeavour to regain by corruption what was surrendered to force, began in 
1783, and increased greatly after the defeat of Orde's Propositions. To restrain 
this, Mr. Forbes, on the 13th of March, 1786, moved for leave to bring in a bill to 
limit the amount of pensions. It was read a fir.st time, and he then moved that it 
" be read a second time to-morrow." Sir Hercules Langrishe moved the adjourn- 
ment of the question to August (i. e. altogether), in a speech full of Hanoverian 
doctrines, and was supported by (amongst others) Sir Boyle Roche, in an absurd 
speech, which, as a specimen of his celebrated style, we insert : — 

" Sir Boyle Roche — I opposed this bill at its first rising in this house, in the shape 
of a motion. [The house called to Sir Boyle to speak up.] Indeed I thiuk it nec- 
essary that I should overcome my bashfulness and I lament that I was not brought 
np to the learned profession of the law, for that is the best remedy for bashfulness 
of all sorts. 

" The just prerogative of the crown and the rights of parliament are the main pil- 
lars that support the ponderous pile of our constitution. I never will consent to 
meddle with cither, lest I should bring the whole building about my ears. 

"I would not stop the fountain of royal favor, but let it flow freely, spontane- 
ously and abundantly as Holywell in Wales, that turns so many mills. Indeed some 
of the best men have drank of this fountain, which gives honor as well as vigor. 
This is my way of thinking; at the same time I feel as much integrity and principle 
as any man that hears me. Principle is the fair ground to act upon, and that any 
man should doubt the principle of another, because he happens to difler with him in 
opinion, is so bad an act that I do not choose to give it a name. — Debates, Vol. VI., 
pp. 280, 81. 

r^^^R. CUERAN said — I object to adjourning this bill to the first 
JtHjig of August, because I perceive in the present disposition of 
i the house, that a proper decision will be made upon it this 
night. We have set out upon our enquiry in a manner so 
honorable, and so consistent, that we have reason to expect the hap- 
piest success, which I would not wish to see bafiled by delay. 



336 TREASUKY OF EI,OQUENCE. 

Wo began with giving the full affirmative of this house, that no 
grievance exists at all ; we considered a simple matter of fact, and 
adjourned our opinion ; or rather, we gave sentence on the conclu- 
sion, after having adjourned the premises. But I do begin to see a 
great deal of argument in what the learned Baronet has said ; and I 
beg gentlemen will acquit me of apostacy, if I offer some reasons why 
the bill should not be admitted to a second reading. 

I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish opinion, 
as that our constitution is maintained by its different component parts, 
mutually checking and controlling each other ; they seem to think, 
with Hobbes, that a state of nature is a state of warfare ; and that, 
like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is suspended between the at- 
traction of different powers. INIy friends seem to think that the 
crown should be restrained from doing wrong by a physical necessity ; 
forgetting that if you take away from man all power to do wrong, 
you, at the same time, take away from him all merit of doing right; 
and, by making it impossible for men to run into slavery, you en- 
slave them most effectually. But if, instead of the three different 
parts of our constitution drawing forcibly in right lines, in different 
directions, they were to unite their power, and draw all one way, in 
one right line, how great would be the effect of their force, how 
happy the direction of this union ! The present system is not only 
contrary to mathematical rectitude, but to public harmony; but if, 
instead of privilege setting up his back to oppose prerogative, he 
were to saddle his back, and invite prer,)gative to ride, how comfort- 
ably they miglit both jog along ! and therefore it delights me to hear 
the advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely, and spontaneously, 
and abundantly, as Holywell in AValcs. If the crown grant double 
the amount of the revenue in pensions, they approve of their royal 
master, for ho is the breath of their nostrils. 

But we shall find that this complaisance, this gentleness between 
the crown and its true servants, is not confined at home ; it extends 
its influence to foreign powers. Our merchants have been insulted 
in Portugal, our commerce interdicted; what did the British Hondo? 
Did he whet his tusks? did he bristle up, and shake his mane? 
did he roar? No; no such thing; the gentle creatui'o Avagged his 
tail for six years at the court of Lisbon ; and now we hear from the 
Delphic Oracle on the treasury bench, ihat he is wagging his tail in 



JOHN P. CUKRAN. 337 

London to Chevalier Pinto, who, he hopes soon to be able to tell us, 
will allow his lady to entertain him as a lap-dog ; and when she does, 
no doubt the British factory will furnish some of their softest wool- 
lens, to make a cushion for him to lie upon. But though the gentle 
beast has continued so long fawning and couching, I believe his ven- 
geance will be great as it is slow ; and that posterity, whose ances- 
tors are j'et unborn, will be surprised at the vengeance he will 
take! 

This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pensioi\ 
list, embraces every link ni the human chain, every description of 
men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke 
or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who humbleth her- 
self that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its 
greatest perfection ; it teacheth, that slowth and vice may eat that 
bread which virtue and honesty may stai've for after they have earned 
it. It teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that supfiort 
which they are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of 
men to an entire reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feed 
the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food. It 
teaches them to imitate tliose saints on the pension list that are like 
the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are 
aiTayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson, 
which, indeed, they might have learned from Epictetus, that it is 
sometimes good not to be over virtuous ; it shows, that in propor- 
tion as our distresses increase, the munificence of the ci'own increases 
also ; in proportion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is 
extended over us. 

Notwithstanding that the pension list, like charity, covers a mul- 
titude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to the 
members of this house — give me leave to say, that the crown, in 
extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying a founda- 
tion for the independence of parliament ; for hereafter, instead of 
orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such mean and 
unworthy persons as freeholders, they will learn to despise them, 
and look to the first man in the state ; and they will, by so doing, 
have this security for their independence, that while any man in the 
kingdom has a shilling, they will not want one. 

Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ireland 



33S TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

should decline from their present flourishing and prospej'ous state — 
suppose they should fall into the hands of men who would wish to 
drive a profitable commerce, by having members of parliament to 
hire or let ; iu such a case a secretary would find great difficulty, if 
the proprietors of members should enter into a combination to form 
a monopoly : to prevent which, in time, the wisest waj' is to jDur- 
chase up the raw material, young members of parliament, just rough 
from the grass ; and when they are a little bitted, and he has got a 
pretty stud, perhaps of seventy, he may laugh at the slave merchant ;. 
some of them he may teach to sound through the nose, like a barrel 
organ ; some, in the course of a few months, might be taught to cry, 
" Hear ! hear ! " some " Chair ! chair ! " upon occasion — though 
those latter might create a little confusion, if they were to forget 
whether they were calling inside or outside of those doors. Again 
he might have some so trained that he need only pull a string, and 
up gets a repeating member : and if thej' were so dull that they 
could neither speak nor make orations (for they are different things), 
he might have them taught to dance, pedibus ire in nenlentia. This 
improvement might be extended : he might have them dressed in 
coats and shirts all of one color; and, of a Sunday, he might march 
them to church two by two, to the great edification of the people, 
and the honor of the Christian religion ; afterwards, like ancient 
Spartans, or the fraternity of Kilmainham, they might dine all to- 
gether iu a large hall. Good heaven ! what a sight to see them feeding 
in public, upon public viands, and talking of public subjects, for the 
benefit of the public ! It is a pity they are not immortal ; but I hope 
they will flourish as a corporation, and that pensioners will beget 
pensioners, to the end of the chapter. — Debates, Vol. VI., pp. 281-4. 

The adjournment was, however, carried. We shall presently find that the bill 
■was renewed, and supported by Curran, in the next year. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 339 



Stamp Officers' Salaries. 



February 4th, 1790.* 

On this day Curran spoke and proposed as follows : — 

Wji RISE with that deep concern and melancholy hesitation, which 
^^ a man must feel who does not know whethei- he is addressing 
^ an independent parliament, the representatives of the people 
J, of Ireland, or whether he is addressing the representatives of 
corruption. I rise to make the experiment ; and I approach the 
question with all the awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend 
prostrate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest the 
means he should use to recover him may only serve to show that he 
is dead and gone forever. I rise to make an experiment upon the 
representatives of the people — whether they have abdicated their 
trust, and have become the paltry representatives of castle influence ; 
it is to make an experiment on the feelings and probity of gentle- 
men, as was done on a great personage, when it was said "Thou art 
the man." It is not a question respecting a paltry viceroy ; no, it is 
a question between the body of the country and the administration ; 
it is a charge against the government, for opening the batteries of 
corruption against the liberties of the people. The grand inquest 
of the nation are called on to decide this charge ; they are 
called on to declare whether they would appear as the prosecutors 
or the accomplices of corruption ; for though the question relative to 
the division of the Boards of Stamps and Accounts is in itself of 
little importance, yet it will develop a system of corruption tending 

* It is riglit to mention here that on the 5th of January, 1790, Jolm Fane, Earl of 
■Westmoreland, succeeded the Marquis of Buckingham as Viceroy, and Mr. R. flo- 
bart (afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire), became Secretary to the Lord Lieuten- 
ant. 



340 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to the utter destruction of Irish liberty, and to the sepai-ution of the 
connexion vvitli England. 

I bring forward an act of the meanest administration that ever 
disgraced this country. I bring it forward as one of the threads by 
which, united with others of similar texture, vermin of the meanest 
kind have been able to tie down a body of strength and imjDortance. 
Let me not be supposed to rest here ; when the murderer left the 
mark of his bloody hand upon the wall, it was not the trace of one 
finger, but the M'hole impression which convicted him.* 

The Board of Accounts was instituted in Lord Townshend's ad- 
ministration ;■)■ it came forward in a manner rather inauspicious ; 
it was questioned in ijarliament, and decided for by the majority 
of the five members who had received places under it.. Born in 
corruption, it could only succeed by venality. It continued a use- 
less board until the granting of the stamp duties, in Lord Harcourt's 
time ;J the management of the stamps was then committed to it, 
and a solemn compact was made that the taxes should not be jobbed, 
but that both departments should be executed by one board. So 
it continued till it was thought necessary to increase the salaries of 
the commissioners, in the Marquis of Buckingham's famous admin- 
tration.§ 

Then nothing was held secret; the increase of the Revenue 
Board, the increase of the Ordnance, thirteen thousand pounds a 
year added to the infamous Pension List — these were not sufficient, 
but a compact which should have been held sacred was violated, in 
order to make places for members of parliament. How indecent ! 
two county members prying into stamps ! What could have pro- 
voked this insult? I will tell you. You remember when the sceptre 
was trembling in the hand of an almost expiring monarch ; when a 
factious and desperate English minister attempted to grasp it, you 
stood up against the profanation of the English and the insult offered 
to the Irish crown ; and had you not done it, the union of the empire 
would have been dissolved. You remember this ; remember, then, 

* Alluding to a notable conviction by circumstantial evidence. 

t From 1767 to 1772. 

J Lord Ilarcourt succeeded Lord Townshend. 

§ The Marquis of Bucl^inghara was Lord Lieutenant from the 15th of September, 
1782, to the 3d of June, 1783, as Earl Temple, and from the 16th of December, 1787, 
to the 5th of January, 1790, as Marquis of Buckingham. 



JOHN P. CUKRAN. 341 

yourselves ; remember your triumph ; it was that triumph which ex- 
posed you to submit to the resentmeut of the Viceroy ; it was that 
triumph which exposed you to disgrace and flagellation. In propor- 
tion as you rose by union 3'our tyrant became appalled ; but when 
he divided he sunk you, and you became debased. How this has 
happened no man could imagine ; no man could have suspected that 
a minister without talents could have worked your ruin. There is a 
pride in a great nation that fears not its destruction from a reptile ; 
yet there is more than fable in what we are told of the Romans, that 
they guarded the Palladium rather against the subtlet}' of a thief 
than the force of an invader. 

I bring forward this motion not as a question of finance, not as a 
question of regulation, but as a penal inquiry ; and the people will 
now see Avhether they are to hope for help within these walls, or, 
turning their eyes towards heaven, they are to depend on God and 
their own virtue. I rise in an assembly of three hundred persons, 
one hundred of whom have places or pensions ; I rise in an assembly, 
one-third of whom have their eai's sealed against the complaints of 
the people, and their eyes intently turned to their own interest ; I 
rise before the whisperers of the treasurj^ the bargainers and run- 
ners of the castle ; I address an audience before whom was held forth 
the doctrine that the crown ought to use its influence on this house. 
It has been known that a master has been condemned by the confes- 
sion of his slave, drawn from him by torment ; but here the case is 
plain ; this confession was not made from constraint ; it came fiom a 
country gentlemen, deservedly high in the confidence of administra- 
tion, for he gave up other confidence to obtain theirs. 

I rise, sir, to try, when the sluices of corruption have been let 
loose upon us, whether there are any means left to stem the torrent. 
Were our constituents now to behold us, defending the influence 
which has been avowed, they would suppose we were met to vote 
the robber}' of the people and to put the money into our pockets ; that 
under the blasphemous pretence of guarding the liberty of the coun- 
try we were working for our own emolument. 

I know I am speaking too plain ; but which is the more honest 
physician, he who lulls his patient into a fatal security, or he who 
points out the danger and the remedy of the disease? I, Sir, am 



342 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

showing the danger that arises to our honor and our liberty, if we 
submit to have corrujDtion let loose among us. 

I should not be surprised if bad men of great talents should 
endeavor to enslave a people; but, when I see folly uniting with 
vice, corruption with imbecility, men without talents attempting to 
overthrow our liberty, my indignation rises at the presumption and 
audacity of the attempt. That such men should creep into power, 
is a fatal symptom to the constitution ; the political, like the mate- 
rial body, when near its dissolution, often bursts out in swarms of 
vermin. 

In this administration a place may be found for every bad man, 
whether it be to distribute the wealth of the treasury, to vote in the 
house, to whisper, and to Ijargain, to stand at the door and note the 
exits and the entrances of j'our members, to mark M'hether they earn 
their wages, whether it be for the hireling who comes for his hire, or 
for the drunken aide-de-camp who swaggers in a brothel; nay, some 
of them find their way to the treasury-bench, the political musicians, 
or hurdy-gurdy men, to grind the praises of the viceroy. 

Notwithstanding the profusion of government, I ask, what defence 
have they made for the country, in case it should be invaded by a 
foreign foe? They have not a single ship on the coast. Is it, then, 
the smug aide-de-camj), or the banditti of the pension-list, or the 
infantine statesmen, who play in the sunshine of the castle, that are 
to defend the country? No, it is the stigmatized citizens. We are 
now sitting in a countr^^ of four millions of people, and our boast is, 
that they are governed bylaws to which themselves consent; but 
ai'e not more than three millions of the people excluded from any 
participation in making those laws? In a neighboring country, 
twenty-four millions of people were governed by laws to which their 
consent was never asked ; but we have seen them struggle for .free- 
dom ; in this struggle they have burst their chains, and, on the altar 
erected by despotism to public slaveiy, they have enthroned the 
image of public liberty. 

But are our people merely excluded ? No ; they are denied 
redress. Next to the adoration which is due to God, I bend iii 
reverence to the institutions of that religion, which teaches me to 
know his divine goodness ; but what advantage does the peasant of 
the South receive from the institutions of religion ? Does he experi- 



JOHN p. cuiiRAN. 343 

•ence the blessing? No; he never hears the voice of the shepherd, 
nor feels the pastoral crook, but when it is entering his flesh, and 
goading his very soul. 

In this country, Sir, our King is not a resident ; the beam of roy- 
alty is often reflected through a medium, which sheds but a kind of 
disastrous twilight, serving only to assist robbers and plunderers. 
We have no security in the talents or responsibility of an Irish min- 
istry ; injuries, which the English constitution would easily repel, 
may here be fatal. I therefore call upon you to exert yourselves, to 
heave ofl" the vile incumbrances that have been laid upon you. I 
call on you not to a measure of finance or of regulation, but of crim- 
inal accusation, which you may follow with punishment. I there- 
fore. Sir, most humblj' move : — 

" That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying 
that he will order to be laid before this house the particulars of the 
causes, considerations, and representations, in consequence of which 
the Boards of Stamps and Accounts have been divided, with an 
increase of salary to the ofiicers ; also, that he will be graciously 
pleased to communicate to this house the names of the persons who 
recommended that measure." 

After a long debate, Currau replied ; the conclusiou of the following observations 
refers to some vulgarly intemperate and threatening language, held towards him iu 
the house by Sir Boyle Roche and others : — • 

One member has boldly advanced and justified corruption as the 
■engine of government ; it is the first time that open bribery has 1)een 
avowed, in even the worst of times, in this country; but the people 
now are fairly told that it is lawful to rob them of their property, 
and divide the plunder among the honest gentlemen who sell them 
to administration. As to the honorable member not finding much 
force in my arguments, I am not much surprised at it ; they labor 
under much disadvantage when compared with the honorable mem- 
ber's. My arguments are not all on the same side ; — they arc not 
stamped with that current impression which has so visible an effect 
on the honorable member's opinion — they are not arguments equally 
despised by those to whom he deserted, and those from whom he 
apostatized. They are not arguments compensated and disavowed, 
hired and abhorred. The honorable member [the Solicitor-General] 
lias talked of intimidation. I see no intimidation in talking of tho 



344 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

conduct of France. A great country asserting her freedom against 
the vices and corruption of a court, is a glorious object of generous 
emulation in every free assembly ; it is only to corruption and pros- 
titution that the example can be terrible. But from what quai'tcr of 
the house has intimidation dared to come ? 

We have been told this night in express words, that the man who 
dares to do his duty to his country in this house, may expect to be 
attacked without these walls by the military gentlemen of the castle. 
If the army had been directly or indirectly mentioned in the course 
of the debate, this extraordinary declaration might be attributable to 
the confusion of a mistaken charge, or an absurd vindication ; but 
without connection with the subject, or pretence of connection with 
the subject, a new principle of government is advanced, and that is 
the bayonet ; and this is stated in the fullest house and most crowded 
audience I ever saw. "\Ve are to be silenced by corruption within, 
or quelled by force of arms without. If the strength of numbers or 
corruption should fail against the cause of the public, it is to be 
backed by assassination. Nor is it necessary that those avowed 
principles of bribery and arms should come from any high personal 
authoi'ity ; they have been delivered by the known retainers of 
administration, in the face of that bench, and heard even without a 
murmur of dissent or disapprobation. 

For my part, I do not know how it may be my destiny to fall ; it 
may be by chance, or malady, or violence ; but shouM it be my fate 
to perish the victim of a bold and honest discharge of my duty, I 
will not shun it. I will do that duty ; and if it should expose me to 
sink under the blow of the assassin, and become a victim to the pub- 
lic cause, the most sensible of my regrets would be, that on such an 
altar there should not be immolated a more illustrioas sacrifice. As 
to myself, while I live, I shall despise the peril. I feel in my own 
spirit the safety of my honor, and in my OAvn and the spirit of the 
people do I feel strength enough to hold that administration, which 
can give a sanction to menaces like these, responsible for their con- 
sequences to the nation and the individual. — Deba(es,Yo\. X., pp. 
108 — 11, and 132, 3. 

The resolution was rejected by 141 to 81. 

One of the consequences of this speech was the duel between Curran and the 
Eight Honorable Major llobart (afterw.ards Earl of Buckiugbamshire), of whiclil 
have spoken in the preliminary Memoir. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 345^ 



Government Corruption. 



February 12th, 1791. 

. On this clay Curran made another attempt to probe the impurities of government. 

^w^R. CURRAN observing the house thin, and the giilleiy 
yil"^l-4 crowded, began by lamenting that curiosity seemed to act 
^cMjji;^ more powerfully on the public than a sense of duty on 
''^'^ the members of the house. After saying a few words 
on his motives in making the intended motion, he stated its im- 
jjortunce as going to induce enquiry into a crime which must, if 
not punished and prevented, ultimately effect the destruction of the 
society in which it was suffered ; it was raising men to the peerage 
for money, which was disposed of to purchase the liberties of the 
people. 

A man who stands forth an accuser in a case lilie this ought to be 
received by the house as its best friend, or, if his accusation should 
prove unfounded and malicious, then the heaviest indignation of the 
house should fall on him. When a motion of similar import was 
proposed on a former day, I could not suppose that it would have 
met with opposition ; but finding it has been opposed, I think the 
house must have objected to its form, and that they were unwilling 
to enter into an enquiry wherein the honor and privileges of the 
Lords, as well as those of this house, are concerned, without their 
lordships' concurrence. 

I am not inclined, after what has passed so recently on this sub- 
ject, to expatiate on the enormity of the act, nor on the wretched 
situation of those miserable men who are, by it, introduced into this 
house, like beasts of burden, to drudge for their employers — the 
humble instruments and pliant tools of power. Still less am I in- 



346 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

cliued to depict the situation of tliose who are introduced into the 
other, clothed in the robes of justice, to frame laws, and dispose of 
the property of the kingdom, under the direction of that corruption 
by which they have been raised. It would be moi'e useful to con- 
sider what shoidd be done at such a crisis, and what is the duty of 
the house : and this duty is not difficult to be ascertained — it is not 
to be cited from volumes of law ; we are the gi-and inquest of the 
nation — it is, therefore, our duty to enquire into the alleged ofience. 
Every man capable of sitting on a Grand Jury is adequate to the 
enquiry ; the oath of the Grand Juror suggests their duty — not to 
till ppress from malice, nor find from favor . 

I have heard it affirmed that common fame is not sufficient ground 
to institute this enquiry ; but, on the principle of the constitution, I 
do assert that common fame is a full and sufficient ground of enquiry ; 
and I appeal to the house — to the kingdom — whether any report 
can be more prevalent, or more credited, than that such corrupt con- 
tract as I have mentioned, was entered into by administration. 

But I rest not on common fame — I have ruooF, and I stake my 
character on producing such evidence to a committee as shall fully 
and incontroverti))ly establish the fact, that a contract has been en- 
tered into by the present ministers to raise to the peerage certain 
persons, on condition of their purchasing a certain number of seats 
in this house. This evidence, however, I will not produce, till a 
committee shall be appointed ; for no man can suppose that a man 
who is rich enough to purchase a peerage is not rich enough to cor- 
rupt the witnesses, if I should produce them at the bar, before an 
inquiry is instituted. 

I call on any lawyer to say, whether a man professing himself 
ready to prosecute, and staking himself to convict, would not, in 
any court, be admitted to go into trial ? I call on lawyers to answer 
this question, for on this it depends, not whether the culprits shall 
be tried, but whether the Commons of Ireland shall be acquitted. I 
call on you to be cautious in your decision of this question, lor you 
are in the heai-ing of a great number of the people of Ireland. 

The Speaker called to order, and informed him it was unparliamentary to allude 
to strangers — that there was a standing order, which excluded strangers, and if 
:any allusions are made by a member, he must enforce the order. Sir H. Cavendish 
also spoke to order, and censured Mr. Curran's language as highly disorderly. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 3^.7 

Mr. Grattan did not think this doctrine was consistent with the nature of a pop- 
ular assembly, such as the House of Commons. He quoted an expression of Lord 
Chatham's, in support of this opinion, who, in the House of Peers, where such 
language was certainly less proper thau in a House of Commons, addressed the 
Peers : — "My Lords, I speak not to your Lordships — I speak to the public and to 
the constitution." The expression, he said, was, at first, received with some mur- 
murs, but the good sense of tlie house and the genius of the constitution justified 
Mm. 

Mr. Ciu-ran — I do not wish to use disorderly language, but I am 
concerned for the honor of the house, which is degraded by becom- 
ing a;'complices in a crime so flagrant ; this induces me to remind 
you that you are in the presence of the public. 

Chair again called to order, and must clear the house if auy allusiou to straugers. 

I do not allude to any strangers in the gallerj-, but to the con- 
structed presence oi the people of Ireland. I call on the house to 
fix their eyes on four millions of people, whom a sergeant-at-arms 
cannot keep unacquainted with your proceedings. I call on 3-ou to 
consider yourselves as in the presence of the majesty of the people — 
in the immortal presence — and not to give impunity to guilt, either 
from consciousness of participation, or from favor to the criminal. 

I direct your attention to the people without doors, because that 
people must now have contracted a habit of suspicion at what passes 
within these walls. In the course of two sessions the constitution 
of Britain has been demanded in the name of the people and refused. 
It is the wisdom of Great Britain to restrain the profusion of public 
money for corrupt purposes, by limiting her pension-list. It is the 
wisdom of Great Britain to preclude from lier senate men whose sit- 
uations afford ground to suspect that they would be under undue 
influence. It is the wisdom of Britain that certain individuals should 
be responsible to the people for public measures. These were de- 
manded by the people of Ireland, but the wisdom, certainly not the 
corruption, of this house has denied them. 

To have claims of alleged right continnalh- overborne by a majority 
may induce credulous minds to suppose the house corrupt. Another 
circumstance xaviy contribute to give strength to the suspicion. We 
have enjoyed our constitution, such as it is, but eight years, and in 
the course of that time, there has been twice that number of attacks 



;-;|3 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

made ou it ; and now those very gentlemen spend their nights in 
patriotic vigils to defend that constitution, whose patriotic -nights 
Avere formerly spent in opposing its acquisition. These circum- 
stances naturally lead the public mind to suspicion — they are cor- 
roborated by another no less remarkable. An honorable baronet* — 
a man fleshed in opposition — one who had been emphatically called 
the arithmetic of the house — to see such a man march to join the 
corps of the minister, without any assignable motive for the trans- 
ition — as if tired of explaining the orders of the house — of talking 
of the majesty of the people, of constitution, and of .liberty — to- 
day glorying in his strength, rejoicing like a giant to run his course, 
and to-morrow cut down ; and nothing left of him but the bliglited 
root from which his honors once had flourished. These are circum- 
stances which, when they happen, naturally put the people on their 
guard. I exhort the house to consider their dignity, to feel their 
independence, to consider the charge I lay before you, and to pro- 
ceed on it with caution and with spirit. If I charge a member of 
your house, with a crime which I am ready to prove, if you give me 
an opportunity, and am ready to submit to the infamy of a false 
accuser if I fail — then to screen such a man, and not permit me to 
prove liis guilt — is yourselves to convict him, and convict him of all 
the guilt and baseness of a crime, allowing him no chance of extenu- 
ation from the circumstances of the case. 

Now I say again, we have full proof to convict ; I have evidence 
unexceptionable, but if you call on me to declare this evidence, I 
will not do it until you enter on the enquiry. I have some property 
in this country ; little as it may be, it is my all : I have children, 
whom I would not wish to disgrace — I have hope — perhaps more 
than I have merit ; all these I stake on establishing my charge. I 
call on you to enter on the trial. [After a very long and able speech 
Mr. Curran moved — "That a committee.be appointed, consisting of 
members of both houses of parliament, who do not hold any employ- 
ment, or enjoy any pension under the crown, to enquire, in the 
most solemn manner, whether the late or present administration 
have, directly or indirectly, entered into any corrupt agreement with 
any person or persons, to recommend such person or persons to his 
Majesty, for the pui'pose of being created peers of this kingdom, on 
* Sir Heury Cavendish, tlie notorious slave of Government, as Tone calls him. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 349 

'Consideration of their paying certain snms of money, to be laid out 
in tlie purchase of seats for members to serve in parliament, contrary 
to the rights of the people, inconsistent with the independence of 
parliament, and in direct violation of the fundamental laws of the 
land."] 

[He afterwards made an observation or two on tlie declaration of 
the Lord Chancellor, when he sat in that house, that it cost govern- 
ment half a million to beat down the aristocracy, and would cost 
them another to beat down the present, and concluded by saying, 
that should the motion be agreed to, it would be necessary, in the 
next place, to send a deputation to the Lords, to desire their concur- 
rence.] — Debates, Vol. XL, pp. 154-7. 

A debate of great length and ability followed, wherein Barrington made a furious 
speech against the motion ; after which Mr. Curran again rose, and replied : — 

The subject of the present motion, however diffused or perplexed 
in the course of this del)ate, whether through ignorance or design, 
has yet reduced itself within a very narrow extent ; and I am fortified 
in my opinion of the necessity of the resolution by the idle arguments 
and the indiscreet assertions which have been urged against it. 
Administration has resisted it with every tongue that could utter a 
word ; cwexy legal gentleman has spoken, but all agree on the 
criminality of selling the independency of this house for the honors 
of the other, — of trafficking an abject and servile commoner for a 
plebeian peerage, — of selling the representatives of the people like 
beasts of labor, — and of exalting to the high dignity of the other 
assembly a set of scandalous purchasers, a disgrace to the nobility, 
and a dishonor to the crown. The guilt, then, being confessed, the 
question must be, whether we have sufficient foundation for enquiry 
into the fact. We have stated that we are in possession of evidence 
to convict the actual offenders, by proving the fact upon them. I 
stand here in my place, a member of your house, subject to your 
power, subject to the vengeance which your justice shall let fall 
upon my head, the accuser of that which you confess to be a crime 
of the basest and blackest enormity. I stand forth, and I repeat 
to you, that there have been very latel}' direct contracts entered into 
for selling the honors of the peerage for money, in order that the 
money so obtained should be employed in buj'ing seats for persons 



350 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to vote for the sellers of these honors. I assert the fact, and I offer, 
at the expense of everything that can be dear to man, to prove the 
charge. Will the accused dare to stand the trial, or vs^ill they admit 
the charge by their silence, or will this house abandon every pretence 
to justice, to honor, or to shame, by becoming their abettors? But 
perhaps gentlemen give weight and credit to the objections of those 
who have opposed mj^ motion. Late as I see it is, perhaps they may 
wish to have their olyections examined. A right honorable gentle- 
man [the Attorney-General] has objections, he says, to the substance, 
and also to the form. AVe have not grounds, he says, for such an 
enquiry : on a former night he thought common fame was no ground 
for parliamentary enquiry ; he thought at that time the parliament 
of the iirst and second of Charles the First a riotous assembly : he 
now only tliinks the authority of that parliament which differs directly 
from his opinion, is lessened b}^ the disturbance of the times. Does 
the learned gentleman think that the commotion occasioned by the 
desperate violence of state offenders can diminish the authority of 
those proceedings by which they are brought to justice ! If he does 
not think so, his objection has no weight, even in his own opinion, 
and ought to have as little in yours. But let me take the liberty of 
telling him that the answering my proposition upon only part of its- 
merits, is but a pitiful fallacy. Yet into such has that very respect- 
able member, I must suppose unintentionally fallen. I have not 
moved upon common fame only ; I move on the offer of proving the 
fact by evidence in my possession. But if I had moved merely on 
common fame — I say that if no parliamentary precedent had existed, 
you ought to make the precedent now. Unless you abdicate the 
power, or abandon your duty as the grand inquest of the nation, you 
must enquire on weaker grounds than those on which I have now 
proposed to you. If you will not enquire until, as the learned 
member says, there has been proof of the charge, he should have 
told you that an offender should be convicted before his trial : if this 
principle were carried further, in capital cases the offender should 
be hanged before you bring him to trial. Or does he think you have 
at least as much power, and as strong a duty as an ordinary grand 
jury? Yes, sir, the great principle is very little different ; like them 
you ought not to present from malice, or suppress from favor ; like 
them, a probability of gnilt is sufficient to put the accused on his 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 352 

trial ; like them, you may present on your own knowledge, without 
any evidence upon oath ; like them, you ought to collect that pro- 
baljility from the ordinary grounds of probability that will impress 
themselves on any reasonable mind. Now, I ask, can any good 
gi'ound be stronger than the univei'sal belief of the nation ? Is there 
a man in this house that has not heard the minutest circumstanfces of 
those scandalous transactions? Has any honorable member in this 
house laid his hand on his heart and declai-ed his disbelief of the 
fact? Will any member now say, upon his honor, he does not 
believe it? But he says it is a libel on the King, the Lords, and 
Commons : I answer, it is, if false ; I answer, it is a scandal, whether 
false or not. 

I add, if it be, you have a false accuser before you, or a guilty 
criminal, whom in common justice you ought to punish. You can 
convict the former only by trying the latter. I challenge that trial. 
But ai-e there no circumstances to corroborate the common fame that 
is dinning this libel into the ears of the people ? or to justify them in 
suspecting that unfair practices have been used in obtaining the present 
influence of administration. Dui'ing the whole of last session we 
have, in the name of the people of Ireland, demanded for them the 
constitution of Great Britain, and it has been imifoi-mly denied. We 
would have passed a law to restrain the shameful profusion of a 
pension-list — it was refused by a majority. We woukl have passed 
a law to exclude persons who must ever be the chattels of the 
government, from sitting in this house — it was refused by a majority. 
A bill to make some person, resident among you, and therefore 
amenable to public justice, responsible for the acts of your governors, 
has been refused to Ireland by a majority of gentlemen calling them- 
selves her representatives. Can we be so vain as to think that the 
bare credit of those majorities can weigh down the opinion of the 
public on the important subject of constitutional right. Or must 
not every man in his senses know that the uniform denial of what 
they look upon to be their indefeasible rights, must become a proof 
to them that the imputation of corrupt practices is founded in fact. 
Now, Sir, if the honorable gentleman's objections in point of sub- 
stance are not to be supported — if, in short, the fact charged is 
highly criminal — if you are competent to enquire into it — if you 
have all the ground that can be expected — does he treat himself or 



352 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the house as he ought, when he makes objections of form? But see 
what those are. We cannot, he says, appoint a committee of both 
houses — we have power only over our own members. I answer, 
the fact of the ol)jection does not exist. We affect no authority over 
the Lords by the resolution I propose. The parliamentary course 
in Great Britain is first to move for a joint committee, and then to 
send a message to the Loi'ds to apprise them thereof, and to request 
their concurrence. But he says it is interfering with their privileges. 
I answer, the offence I state is an outrage upon them as well as upon 
us, and therefore it is peculiarly proper to invite their lordships to 
join us in an enquiry that affects both houses equally. The man 
must be wretchedly ignorant indeed, who does not know that such 
joint committees have been appointed in England, on various occa- 
sions, both before and since the revolution. Such a committee you 
find on their journals so early as the I'cign of Henry the Fomlh ; such 
you find previous to the prosecution of Lord Strafford ; such you 
find on the subject of the India charter, previous to the impeachment 
of the Duke of Leeds, in 169.5. What then becomes of those objec- 
tions in form or in substance ? But another right honorable gentle- 
man [the Prime Sergeant*] put his objection on a single point, 
which, if answered, he will vote for my motion. I accept the con- 
dition, and I claim the promise. I ask him, where he found the 
distinction? Lawyers here seem fond of authorities. But he has 
cited none. Having, then, none of his own, let him submit to profit 
by mine. In those I have already cited there was no previous 
ascertainment of the fact any more than of the offenders, save what 
arose from public common notoriety. [Here Mr. Curran adverted 
to the particular circumstances oi those transactions, to show that 
there was not and could not have been any evidence, either as to the 
crimes or the delinquents, until the enquiry actually began.] But 
the learned member seems to think the crime should first be proved 
by witnesses. I ask him if he was prosecuting for the crown would 
he be so incautious as to disclose his evidence before the actual trial ? 
The honorable gentlemen, then, has opposed me upon a distinction 
unsupported by precedent, and unsupportable by argument or 
principle. [Mr. Curran then examined the arguments of the Solicitor, 
which went nearly on the same ground that had already been taken.] 

* Hou. James Fitzjrerald. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 353 

One new observation which the learned member has produced from 
a legal man, I am sorry is not to the question in debate. The 
learned member, it seems, was surprised to find a motion for reform- 
ing the senate, come from the rejDresentative of a borough. If the 
mover of such a resolution was a man who had, in any instance, since 
he was a member of this house, deserted the principles he professed, 
or betrayed his trust, the observation would have weight, however 
the honorable member is mistaken in thinking the fault of the repre- 
sentative a demerit in the constitution ; but if I have done none of 
those things, I cannot but regret the strange simplicity of argument 
of the honorable gentleman, who comes forward witli a weapon which 
can wound nobody but himself. [Mr. Curran then went through a 
number of less important objections, which had been advanced by 
gentlemen on the other side.] I am sorry to find the honorable 
gentlemen of my own profession have not given more ground to 
vindicate the constitutional independency of that profession. The 
science of the law inspires' a love of libei'ty, of religion, of order, and 
of virtue. It is like every seed, which fails or flourishes, according 
to the nature of the soil. In a rich, and fertile, and ardent genius, 
it is ever found to refine, to condense, and to exalt. In milder 
temperaments it cannot be fairly judged of at a particular side in a 
popular assembly. Far from thinking the silence or the unsuccessful 
speeches of some of my learned brethren as a stain upon their pi"o- 
fession, I think the reverse. I think it proves how strongly they 
are impressed with the demerits of their cause, when they support it 
so badly ; and I feel pleasui-e in seeing what honorable testimony is 
borne by the disconcertion of the head, to the integrity of the heart. 
If, indeed, those professional seeds had been sown in a poor, gross, 
vulgar soil, I would expect nothing from it but a stupid, graceless, 
unprincipled babble — the goodness of the seed would be destroyed 
by the malignity of the soil, and the reception of such a profession 
into such a mind could form only a being unworthy of notice, and 
unworthy of description, unless, perhaps, the indignation of an 
indiscreet moment, observing such an object wallowing in its favorite 
dirt, should fling it against the canvass, and produce a figure of it 
depicted in its own filth. As for my part, if such a description of 
unhappy persons could be found to exist, and should even make me 
the subject of their essays, I would pass them with the silence they 



354 TREASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

deserve, happy to find myself the subject, and not the author of such 
performances. I cannot sit down without reminding gentlemen of 
one curious topic in \vhicli I have been opposed. It has been stated 
that, in a former administration, the Peerage and the Bench were 
actually exposed to sale. If so, the motion cannot be resisted, w-ith- 
out an indelible stain upon the character of the house. I am willing 
to extend the limits of the enquiry, to take in those persons who may 
have been guilty of such a crime : let them be the subjects of the 
same enquiry, and, if they be guilty, of the same punishment. — 
Debates, Vol. XI., pp. 183-8. 

Curran's motion was lost, by 147 to 85. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 355 



Catholic Emancipation. 



Febeuaey 18th, 1792. 

CuRRAN was the uncharging friend of religious liberty. The Catholics had vainly 
prayed for a relaxation of the Penal Code, till the destruction of the British armies 
in America — ^then they succeeded. Again they prayed for further rela.vation; their 
prayer was supported by Grattan and Curran and failed, till, in 1792-3, when Wolfe 
Tone had worketl up a Catholic organization, and the French armies began to con- 
quer, when they gained fresh privileges. 

The pi'oceedings on the 18th of February, on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill are 
most remarkable. They began by the presentation of a petition from the Protes- 
tants of the County Antrim for tlie bill. A conversation on their admission to Trin- 
ity College then occurred, which is so important as to deserve quotation : — 

Mr. Grattan gave notice, that in addition to the privileges now about to be 
granted to the Roman Catholics, the power of becoming Professors of Botany, 
Anatomy, and Chemistry, should be given. 

Hon. Mr. Knox said he also intended to propose that they should be permitted to 
take the academic degrees in the University of Dublin. 

Hon. Denis Browne rose to say, he would second both these intentions. 

The Attorney-General said, under the present laws of the University, Roman 
Catholics could not be admitted to take degrees without taking the oaths usually 
taken by Protestants. As the University is a corporation deriving by charter under 
the crown, and governed by the laws prescribed by its founder, it would not be very 
decorous for parliament to break through those laws ; but the king might, if such 
was his pleasure, direct the College to dispense with these oaths ; and in his opin- 
ion it would be wise to do so. 

Mr. Knox said it was not his intention to infringe upon any prerogative of the 
crown, but he could not see how this proposal was an infringement, as the bill 
must in its ultimate stage, pass under the inspection of the crown, and receive the 
royal assent. Nevertheless, if any gentleman of the University would rise and say 
the wish of the University was to have these impediments removed, he would then 
not think it necessary to make the motion. 

Sir Hercules Langrishe — The bill is intended to remove certain disabilities which 
the Catholics (.by law) labor under. Now there is no law as to tliis point : When it 
became necessary for me, in framing the bill, to search through the laws relative to 
education, I found there was no law to prohibit Roman Catholics from taking 
degrees, but the rules of the University itself; these rules can be changed when- 
ever the crown shall think proper, but it would be very unbecoming for the parlia- 



356 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

meut to interfere. As to the principle tliere can be no difference of opinion ; we 
differ only as to the mode of carrying it into effect. 

Doctor Browne (of the College) — I am unable to say what the sentiments of the 
heads of the College are upon this subject, as they have not informed me; but the 
reason the right honorable gentleman has stated is certainly the true reason why 
Roman Catholics are not admitted to degrees. If it shall be deemed expedient to 
admit them, the college must be much enlarged, and a greater number of governors 
must be appointed. My own sentiment is, that such a measure would tend much 
to remove prejudices, and to make them coalesce with Protestants. This is my 
own sentiment, and the sentiment of several persons of the University; but I can- 
not say whether it be the sentiment of the majority. If the house shall think the 
measure expedient, they may address his Majesty to remove the oath which bars 
them from taking degrees. 

After the presentation of a petition by Mr. Egan, for the restoration of the elec- 
tive franchise, the discussion on the bill proceeded. The speeches of Michael 
Smith, Hutchinson, Grattan, and Curran, gave the bill most powerful support. One 
of the boldest and Unest speeches was that of the Hon. George Knox — a man too 
little remembered 

^I^R. CUERAN said — I would have yielded to the lateness of. the 
^y^^ hour, my own indisposition, and the fatigue of the house, 
(I'JIf) ^^^^ have let the motion pass without a word from me on 
i/t^>^'. the subject, if I had not heard some principles advanced 

»'^ which could not pass without animadversion, I know that 

a trivial subject of the day would naturally engage you more deeply 
than any more distant object, of however greater importance, but I 
beg you will recollect, that the petty interest of party must expire 
with yourselves, and that your heirs must be not statesmen, nor 
placemen, nor pensioners, but the future people of the country at 
large. I know of no so awful call upon the justice and wisdom of 
an assembly, as the reflection that they are deliberating on the 
interests of posterity. On this subject, I cannot but lament, that 
the conduct of the administration is so unhappily calculated to dis- 
turb and divide the public mind, to prevent the nation from receiv- 
ing so great a question with the coolness it requires. 

At Cork, the present viceroy was pleased to reject a most moder- 
ate and modest petition from the Catholics of that city. The next 
step was to create a division among the Catholics themselves ; the 
next was to hold them up as a body formidable to the English gov- 
ernment, and to their Protestant fellow-subjects ; for how else could 
any man account for the scandalous publication which was hawked 
about this city, in which his Majesty was made to give his royal 



JOHN p. CURRAN. 357 

thanks to an individual of this kingdom, for his protection of the 
state. But I conjure the house to be on their guard against those 
despicable attempts to traduce the people, to alarm their fears, or 
to inflame their resentment. Gentlemen have talked, as if the ques- 
tion was, whether we may with safety to ourselves, relax or repeal 
the laws w^hich have so long coerced our Catholic fellow subjects ? 
The real question is, whether you can, with safety to the Irish con- 
stitution, refuse such a measure? It is not a question merely of 
their sufi"erings or their relief — it is a question of your own pres- 
ervation. There are some maxims which an honest Irishman will 
never abandon, and by which every public measure may be fairly 
tried. These are the preservation of the constitution upon the prin- 
ciples established at the revolution, in church and state ; and next 
the independency of Ireland, connected with Britain as a confeder- 
ated people, and united indissolubly under a common inseparable 
crown. If you wish to know how these great objects may be afiected 
by a repeal of those laws, see how they were affected by their 
enactment. Here you have the infallible tests of fact and experi- 
ence ; and wretched, indeed you must be, if false shame, false pride, 
false fear, or false spirit, can prevent you from reading that lesson 
of wisdom which is written in the blood and the calamities of your 
country. [Here Mr. Curran went into a detail of the Popery laws, 
as they aflected the Catholics of Ireland.] These laws were de- 
structive of arts, of industry, of private morals and public order. 
They were fitted to extirpate even the Christian religion from 
amongst the people, and* reduce them to the condition of savages and 
rebels, disgraceful to humanity, and formidable to the state. 

[He then traced the progress and effects of those laws from the 
revolution in 1779.] Let me now ask j'ou, how have those laws 
affected the Protestant suliject and the Protestant constitution ? In 
that interval were they free ? Did they possess that liberty which 
they denied to their brethren? No Sir ; where there are inhabi- 
tants, but no people, there can be no freedom ; unless there be a 
spirit, and what may be called a pull, in the people, a free govern- 
ment cannot he kept steady, or fixed in its seat. You had indeed a 
government, but it was planted in civil dissension, and watered in 
civil blood, and whilst the virtuous luxuriance of its branches aspired 
to heaven, its infernal roots shot downward to their congenial 



358 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

regions, and were intertwined in hell. Your ancestors thought 
themselves the oppressors of their fellow-subjects, but they were 
only their gaolers, and the justice of Providence would have been 
frustrated, if tiieir own slavery had not been the punishment of their 
vice and their folly. But are these facts for which we must appeal 
to history ? You all remember the year one thousand seven hun- 
dred and seventy-nine. What were you then? Your constitution, 
without resistance, in the hands of the British parliament ; your 
trade in many parts extinguished, in every part coerced. So low 
were you reduced .to beggary and servitude as to declare, that 
unless the mercy of England was extended to your trade, you could 
not subsist. Here you have an infallible test of the ruinous influ- 
ence of those laws in the experience of a century ; of a constitution 
surrendered, and commerce utterly extinct. But can you learn 
nothing on this sul)ject from the events that followed? In 1778 you 
somewhat relaxed the severity of those laws, and improved, in some 
degree, the condition of the Catholics. What was the consequence 
even of a partial union with your countrymen ? The united efforts 
of the two bodies restored that constitution which had been lost by 
their separation. In 1782 j-ou became free. Your Catholic breth- 
ren shared the danger of the conflict, but you had not justice or 
gratitude to let them share the fruits of the victory. You suflered 
them to relapse into their former insignificance and depression. 
And, let me ask you, has it not fared with you according to your 
deserts? Let me ask you if the parliament of Ireland can ])oast of 
being now less at the feet of the British minister, than at that period 
it was of the British parliament? [Here he observed on the con- 
duct of the administration for some years past, in the accumulation 
of public burdens and parliamentary influence.] But it is not the 
mere increase of debt ; it is not the creation of one hundred and ten 
placemen and pensioners that forms the real cause of the jjublic 
malady. The real cause is the exclusion of your people from all 
influence upon the representative. The question, therefore, is, 
whether you will seek your own safety in the restoration of your 
fellow-subjects, or whether you will choose rather to perish than to 
be just? "I now proceed to examine the objections to a general in- 
corporation of the Catholics. On general principles no man can 
justify the deprivation of civil rights on any ground but that of for- 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 359 

feiturc for some offence. The Papist of the last century might for- 
feit his property forever, for that was his own, but he could not 
forfeit the rights and capacities of his unborn posterity. And let 
me observe, that even those laws against the ofiender himself, were 
enacted while injuries were recent, and while men were, not unnat- 
urally, alarmed by the consideration of a French monarchy, a Pre- 
tender, and a Pope ; things that we now read of, but can see no 
more. But are they disaflected to liberty? On what ground can 
such an imputation be supported ? Do you sec any instance of any 
man's religious theory governing his civil or political conduct? Is 
Popery an enemy to freedom? Look to France, and be answered. 
Is protestantism necessarily its friend ? You are Protestants ; look 
to yourselves, and bo refuted. But look further : do you find even 
the religious sentiments of sectaries mai-ked by the supposed char- 
acteristics of their sects. Do you not find that a Protestant Briton 
can be a bigot, with only two sacraments, and a Catholic French- 
man a Deist, admitting seven ? But you affect to think your prop- 
erty in danger, by admitting them into the state. That has been 
already refuted ; but you have yourselves refuted j'our own objec- 
tion. Thirteen years ago you expressed the same fear, yet you 
made the experiment ; you opened the door to landed property, and 
the fact has shown the fear to be without foundation. 

But another curious topic has been stated again ; the Pi'otestant 
ascendancy is in danger. What do you mean by that word ? Do 
you mean the rights, and properly, and dignities of the church? If 
you do, you must feel they are safe. They are secured by the law, 
by the coronation oath, by a Protestant Parliament, a Protestant 
king, a Protestant confederated nation. Do you mean the free and 
protected exercise of the Protestant religion ? You know it has the 
same security to support it. Or do you mean the just and honorable 
support of the numerous and meritorious clergy of your own country, 
who really discharge the labors and duties of the ministry? As to 
that, let me say, that if we felt on that subject as we ought, we 
should not have so many men of talent and virtue struggling under 
the difficulties of their scanty pittance, and feeling the melancholy 
conviction that no virtues or talents can give them any hope of ad- 
vancement. If you really mean the pi-eservation of every right and 
every honor than can dignify a Christian priest, and give authority 



360 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to his function, I will protect them as zcalouslj' as 3^011. I will ever 
respect and revere the man who employs himself in diflusing light, 
hope, and consolation. But if you mean by ascendancy the power 
of persecution, I detest and abhor it. If you mean the ascendancy 
of an English school over an Irish university, I cannot look upon it 
without aversion. An ascendancy of that form raises to my mind a 
little greasy emblem of stall-fed theology, imported from some 
foreign land, with the graces of a lady's maid, the dignity of a side- 
table, the temperance of a larder, its sobriety the dregs of a patron's 
bottle, and its wisdom the dregs of a patron's understanding, brought 
hither to devour, to degrade, and to defame. Is it to such a thing 
you would have it thought that you affixed the idea of the Pi'otest- 
ant ascendancy? But it is said, admit them by degrees, and do not 
run the risk of too precipitate an incorpoi'ation. I conceive both the 
argument and the fact unfounded. In a mixed government, like 
ours, an increase of the democratic power can scarcely ever be dan- 
gerous. None of the three powers of our constitution act singly in 
the line of its natural direction ; each is necessarily tempered and 
diverted by the action of the other two ; and hence it is, that though 
the power of the crown has, perhaps, far transcended the degree to 
which theory might confine it, the liberty of the British constitution 
may not be in much danger. An increase of power, to any of the 
three, acts finally upon the state with a very diminished influence, 
and, therefore, great indeed must be that increase in any one of 
them which can endanger the practical balance of the constitution. 
Still, however, I contend not against the caution of a general admis- 
sion. Let me ask you can you admit them any otherwise than grad- 
ually ? The striking and melancholy symptom of the public disease 
is, that if it recovers at all, it can be only through a feeble and lin- 
gering convalescence. Yet even this gradual admission your Catho- 
lic brethi'cn do not ask, save under every pledge and every restriction 
which your justice and wisdom can recommend to your adoption. 

I call on the house to consider the necessity of acting with a social 
and conciliatory mind. Contrary conduct may perhaps protract the 
unhappy depression of our country, but a partial liberty cannot long 
subsist. A disunited people cannot long subsist. With infinite 
regret must any man look forward to the alienation of three millions 
of our people, and to a degree of subserviency and corruption in a 



JOHN P. (JUERAN. 3QJ 

fourth. I am sorry to think it is so very easy to conceive, that in 
case of such au event, the inevitable consequence would be an union 
with Great Britain. And if any one desires to know what that 
would be, I will tell him. Tt would be the emigration of every man 
of consequence from Ireland ; it would be the participation of British 
taxes, without British trade ; it would be the extinction of the Irish 
name as a people. We should become a wretched colony, j^erhaps 
leased out to a company of Jews, as was formerly in contemplation, 
and governed by a few tax-gatherers and excisemen, unless, possibly, 
you may add fifteen or twenty couple of Irish member's, who may be 
found every session sleeping in their collars under the manger of the 
British minister. — Debates, Vol. XII., pp. 174-178. 



5(j2 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Rev. William Jackson. 



April 23d, 1795. 

Mr. W. H. Curran, in the Memoirs of liis Father, thus describes Jackson : — 

" Mr. Jackson was a clergyman of the Established Church; he was a native of 
Ireland, but he had for several years resided out of that country. He spent a part 
■of his life in the family of the noted Duchess of Kingston, and is said to liave been 
the person who conducted that lady's controversy with the celebrated Foote. At 
the period of the French Revolution ho passed over to Paris, where he formed 
political connections with tlie constituted authorities. From France he returned to 
London, in 1794, for the purpose of procuring information as to the practicability 
of an invasion of England, and was thence to proceed to Ireland on a similar mis- 
sion. Upon his arrival in London, lie renewed an intimacy with a person named 
Cockayne, who had formerly been his friend and confidential attorney. Tlic extent 
of his communications, in the first instance, to Cockayne, did not exactly appear. 
The latter, however, was prevailed upon to write the directions of several of Jack- 
son's letters, containing treasonable matters, to his correspondents abroad; but in 
a little time, either suspecting or repenting that he had been furnishing evidence of 
treason against himself, he revealed to the British Minister, Mr. Piit, all that he knew 
or conjectured relative to Jackson's objects. By the desire of Mr. Pitt, Cockayne 
accompanied Jackson to Ireland, to watch and defeat his designs ; and as soon as 
the evidence of his treason was mature, announced himself as a witness for the 
crown. Mr. Jackson was accordingly arrested, and committed to stand his trial for 
high treason. 

" Mr. Jackson was committed to prison in April, 1794, but his trial was delayed, 
by successive adjournments, till the same mouth in the following year. In the inter- 
val he wrote and published a refutation of Paine's Age of Reason, probably in the 
hope that it might be accepted as an atonement. He was convicted, and brought up 
for judgment on the 30th of April, 1795." 

He was indicted for treason in the Summer of 1794 ; but, sometimes for the crown, 
and others for the prisoner, the trial was postponed till the 23d of April, 1795. 

Court — Right Hon. the Earl of Clonmel, Chief Justice; * Hon. Mr. Justice 
Downes, Hon. Mr. Justice Chamberlaine. 

Counsel for the Crown — Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Prime-Sergeant, Mr. Solici- 
tor-General, Mr. Fraukland and Mr. Trench. Agent — Thomas Kemmis, Esq., 
Crown Solicitor. 

*Hon Mr. Justice Boyd was prevented froA attending by indisposition. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 3(53 

Counsel assigned to the prisoner — Mr. Curran and Mr. Ponsonby. 
Assistant Counsel — Mr. R. Guinness, Mr. M'Nally, Mr. Emraett, Mr. Burton and 
Mr. Sampson. Agent — Edward Croolvslianlv Keane, Esq. 

Tlie Attorney-General led tlie prosecution. His cliicf witness was Coclvayne, an 
Englisli attorney. Among tlic papers proved was tliis remarkable View of Iuelaxd, 
by Tone : — 

" Tlie situation of Ireland and England is fundamentally different in this: the 
government of England is national — that of Ireland provincial. The interest of 
the first is the same n ith that of the people ; of the last, directly opposite. The 
people of Ireland are divided into three sects — the Established Church, the Dissen 
ters and Catholics. The first — infinitely the smallest portion — have engrossed, 
besides the whole church patronage, all the profits and honors of the country 
exclusively, and a very great share of tlie lauded property. They are, of course, 
aristocrats, adverse to any change, and decided enemies of the French Revolution. 
The Dissenters — who are much more numerous — are the most enlightened body of 
the nation; they are steady Republicans, devoted to liberty, and, through all the 
stages of the French RevoUitiou, have been enthusiastically attached to it. The 
Catholics — the great body of the people — are in the lowest degree of ignorance, 
and arc ready for any change, because no change can make them worse. The whole 
peasantry of Ireland, the most oppressed and wretched in Europe, may be said to be 
Catholic. They have within these two years received a certain degree of informa- 
tion, and manifested a proportionate degree of discontent, by various insurrections, 
&c. They are a bold, hardy race, and make excellent soldiers. There is nowhere 
a higher spirit of aristocracy than in all the privileged orders, the clergy and gentry 
of Ireland, down to the very lowest; to countervail which, there appears now a 
spirit rising in the people which never existed before, but which is spreading most 
rapidly, as appears by the Defenders, as they are called, and other insurgents. If 
the people of Ireland be 4,500,000, as it seems probable they arc, the Established 
Church may be reckoned at 450,000; the Dissenters at 000,000; the Catholics at 
3,150,000. The prejudices in England are adverse to the French nation under what- 
ever form of government. It seems idle to suppose the present rancor against the 
French Is owing merely to their being Republicans ; it has been cherished by the 
manners of four centuries, and aggravated by continual wars. It is morally certain 
that any invasion of England would unite all ranks in opposition to tlie invaders. 
In Ireland — a conquered, oppressed and insulted country — the name of England 
and her power is universally odious, save with those who have an interest in main- 
taining it; a body, however, only formidable from situation and property, but which 
the first convulsion would level in tlie dust. On the contrary, the great bulk of the 
people of Ireland would be ready to throw off the yoke in this country, if they saw 
any force sufficiently strong to resort to for defence until arrangements could 
be made : the Dissenters are enemies to the English power, from reason and 
from reflection; the Catholics, from a hatred of the English name. In a word, the 
prejudices of one country are directly adverse to the other — dii-ectly favorable to 
an invasion. The government of Ireland is only to be looked upon as agovernment 
of force; the moment a superior force appears, it would tumble at once, as being 
founded neither in the interests nor in the affections of the people. It may be said, 
the people of Ireland show no political exertion. In the first place, public spirit is 
completely depressed by the recent persecutions of several. The convention act, 
the gunpowder, &o., declarations of government, parliamentary unanimity, ordecla- 



3(;4 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

rations of grand juries — all proceeding from aristocrats, whose interest is adverse 
to that of the people, and who think such conduct necessary for their security — 
are no obstacles ; the weight of such men falls in the general welfare, and their own 
tenantry and dependants would desert and turn against them. The people have no 
way of expressing their discontent civiliter, which is, at the same time, greatly 
aggravated by those measures ; and they are, on the other hand, in that semi-bar- 
barous state, which is, of all others, the best adapted for making war. The spirit 
of Ireland cannot, therefore, be calculated fi'om newspaper publications, county 
meetings, &c., at which the gentry only meet and speak for themselves. They are 
so situated that they have but one way left to make their sentiments known, and 
that is by war. The church establishment and tithes are very severe grievances, 
and have been the cause of numberless insurrections. In a word, from reason, 
reflection, interest, prejudice, the spirit of change, the misery of the great bulk of 
the nation, and, above all, the hatred of the English name, resulting from the 
tyranny of near seven centuries, there seems little doubt but an invasion and suffi- 
cient force would be supported by the people. There Is scarce any army in the 
country, and the militia, the bulk of whom are Catholics, would, to a moral cer- 
tainty, refuse to act, if they saw such a force as they could look to for support." 

Curran said : — 



■^ ;'^Y LORDS AND Gentlemen of the Jury, — I am sure the 
attention of the court must be a good deal fatigued. I 
C, .,. ■ i am sure, gentlemen of the iury, that your minds must 
X of necessity be fatigued also. Whether counsel be fatigued 

or not, is matter very little worth the observation that may be 
made upon it. I am glad that it is not necessary for me to add 
a great deal to the labor, either of the court, or the jury. Of 
the court I must have some knowledge — of the jury, I certainly 
am not ignorant. I know it is as unnecessary for me to say 
much, or, perhaps, anything to inform the court, as it would be 
i-idiculous to affect to lecture a jury of the description I have the 
honor to address. I know I address a court, anxious to expound 
fairly and impartially the law of the country, without any apprehen- 
sion of the consequences and effect of any prosecution. In the jury 
I am looking to now, I know I address twelve sensible and respect- 
able men of my country, who are as conscious as I am of the great 
obligation to which they have pledged themselves by their oath, to 
decide upon the question fitirly, without listening to passion, or being 
swayed by prejudice — without thinking of anything except the charge 
which has been made, and the evidence which has been brought in 
support of that charge. They know, as well as I do, that the great 
object of a jury is to protect the country against crimes, and to protect 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 365 

individuals against all accusation that is not founded in truth. They 
■will remember — I know they will remember, that the great object 
of their duty is, according to the expression of a late venerated judge, 
in another country, that they are to come into the box with their 
minds like white paper, upon which prejudice, or passion, or bias, or 
talk, or hope, or fear, has not been able to scrawl anything ; that you, 
gentlemen ! come into the box, standing indifferent as you stand 
unsworn. 

In the little, gentlemen, that I shall take the liberty of addressing 
to you, I shall rest the fate of it upon its intrinsic weight. I shall 
not leave the case in concealment. If there be no ground on which 
the evidence can be impeached, I will venture to say I will neither 
bark at it, nor scold it, in lieu of giving it an answer. Whatever 
objection I have to make, shall be addressed to your reason. I will 
not say tliey are great, or conclusive, or unanswerable objections. 
I shall submit them to you nakedly as they appear to me. If they 
bave weight, you will give it to them. If they have not, a great 
promise, on m}' part, will not give anticipated weight to that whose 
debility will appear when it comes to be examined. 

Gentlemen, you are empannelled to try a charge. It consists of 
two offences, particularly described in the indictment. The first 
question is, what is the allegation ? In the first branch, the prisoner 
is indicted upon a statute, which inflicts the pains and penalties of 
high treason upon any man who shall compass or imagine the king's 
death. The nature of the oflence, if you required any comment on 
it, has been learnedly, and, I must add, candidly commented upon 
by Mr. Attorney-General in stating the case. The second part is, 
that the prisoner did adhere to the king's enemies. By the law of 
this country, there are particular rules, applicable to cases of jirose- 
cutions for high treason, contra-distinguished from all the other 
branches of the criminal law. The nature of the offence called for 
this peculiarity of regulation. There is no species of charge to 
which innocent men ma^'' more easily be made victims, than that of 
■ofl'ences against the state, and therefore it was necessary to give an 
additional protection to the subject. There is an honest impulse in 
the natural and laudable loyalty of every man, that warms his 
passions strongly against the person who endeavors to disturb the 
public quiet and security ; it was necessary, therefore, to guard the 



36o TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

sul)ject against the most dangerous of all abuses — the abuse of a 
virtue, b}' extraordinaiy vigilance. There was another I'eason : — 
There is no charge which is so vague and indefinite, and yet would 
be more likely to succeed, than charging a man as an enemy to the 
state. There is no case in which the venality of a base informer 
could have greater expectation of a base reward. Therefore, gen- 
tlemen, it was necessary to guard persons accused from the over- 
hasty virtue of a jury on the one hand, and on the other from being 
made the sacrifice of the base and rank prostitution of a depraved 
informer. How has the law done this ? By pointing out in terms, 
these rules and orders that shall guide the court, and bind the jury 
in the verdict they shall give. The man shall be a traitor, if ho 
commits the crime, but it must be a crime of which he should be 
l)roveably attaint, by overt acts. And in order that there be au 
opportunity of investigation and defence, the features of the overt 
acts should be stated of public record in the very body of the indict- 
ment. Justly do I hear it observed, that there cannot be devised a 
fairer mode of accusation and trial than this is. Gentlemen, I have 
stated to you how the foundation of it stands in both countries, 
touching the mode of accusation and trial. I have to add to you, 
that in Great Britain it has been found necessary still further to 
increase the sanction of the jury, and the safety of the prisoner, by 
an express statute in King William's time. By that law it is now 
settled in that great country, that no man shall be indicted or con- 
victed, except upon the evidence of two witnesses, and it describes 
what sort of evidence that shall be ; either two witnesses swearing 
directly to the same overt act laid in the indictment, or two witnesses, 
one swearing to one overt act, and the other to another overt act of 
the same si^ecies of treason. So that, in that country, no man can 
be found guilty, except upon the evidence of two distinct credible 
witnesses — credible in their testimony, distinct in their persons, 
and concurring in the evidence of acts of one and the same class of 
treason; for it must be to the same identical treason, sworn to by 
both witnesses ; or one witness deposing to one act of treason, and 
the other to another act of the same class of treason. That is the 
settled law of the neighljoring kingdom, and I state it emphatically 
to you to be the settled law; because far am I from thinking, that 
we have not the blcssinc: of livinc: under the same sanction of law — 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 367" 

far am I from ima<jining that the breath which cannot even taint the 
character of a man in England, shall here blow him from the earth — 
that the proof, which in England wonld not wound the man, shall 
here deprive him of his life — that though the people in England 
would laugh at the accusation, yet here it shall cause the accused to 
perish under it. Sure I am that in a country where so few instances 
of a foul accusation of this sort have occurred, the judges of the 
court will need little argument to give effect to every thing urged 
to show that the law is the same in Ireland as in England. 

Lord Clonmel — Do you mean to argue that the statute of William is iu force ia 
Ireland ? 

Mr. Curi-an. — No, my lord ; not that the statute of William is in 
force — but I mean to argue, that the necessity of two witnesses in 
the case of treason is as strong here as in England. It is the opinion 
of Lord Coke, founded upon a number of authorities ; the ojiinion of 
Lord Coke, referring to a judicial coniirmation of what he says ; the 
opinion of Lord Coke controverted, if it can be said to be contro- 
verted, by the modest and diiSdent dissent of Sir Michael Foster. 
It is laid down by Lord Coke, that he conceives it to be the estab- 
lished law, that two witnesses are necessary to convict : 3 Inst. 26. 
"It seemcth tiiat by the ancient common- law, one accuser or witness 
was not sufficient to convict any person of high treason — and that 
two witnesses be required, appeaix'th by our books, and I remember 
no authority in our books to the contrary." I know of no judicial, 
determination in our books to the contrary of what Lord Coke here 
states : the common law is grounded upon the principles of reason. 
I consider the statutes of Edward VI., and William 111., as statutes 
which had become necessary from the abuses occasioned by a depar- 
ture from the common law. After the statute of Edward VL, 
expressly declaring the necessity of two witnesses, the courts had 
fallen into perhaps a well-intentioned departure from the meaning of 
the statute of Edward VI. , so far that the place of two witnesses 
was supplied in evidence by any thing that the court thought a 
material additional circumstance in the case ; and to the time of 
William III., such a dejiarturo had prevailed, and this was thought 
sufficient to discharge every thing respecting the obligations of the 
statute. It became necessary, therefore, to enact and by that enact- 



368 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

merit to do away the abuse of the principle of the common law, by 
expressly declaring that no man should be indicted or convicted 
except by two witnesses to one overt act, or one witness to one act, 
and a second to another act of high treason of the same species. 
And there seems to me to be a sound distinction between the case of 
high treason, and of any other crime. It is the only crime which 
every subject is sworn against committing : it is the only crime 
which any subject is sworn to abstain from. In every other case 
the subject is left to the fear of punishment which he may feel, or to 
the dictates of his conscience to guard himself against transgressing 
the law ; but treason is a breach of his oath of allegiance, and is so 
f:ir like the case of perjury : and therefore in the case of treason no 
man should be convicted by the testimony of a single witness, 
because it amounts to no more than oath against oath : so that it is 
only reasonable there should be another to turn the scale ; and 
therefore it is that I conceive Lord Coke well warranted in la3'ing 
down this rule, a rule deduced from general justice, and even from 
the law of God himself. Gentlemen, what I am now stating, I offer 
to the court as matter of law. 

But what were these witnesses? Witnesses in all cases beyond 
exception in their personal circumstances, and in their personal 
credit. Therefore it is the law, that no man shall be found guilty of 
any offence that is not legally proved upon him by the sworn testi- 
mony of credible witnesses. Gentlemen, I have submitted my 
humble ideas of the law — I have stated the charge which the pris- 
oner is called upon to answer, let me now state the overt acts, which 
in this particular case are necessary to be proved. The first is, that 
the prisoner did traitorously come to, and land in, Ireland, to pro- 
cure information concerning the subjects of Ireland, and to send 
that information to the persons exercising the government in France, 
to aid them in carrying on the war against the King. I do not recol- 
lect that Cockayne said one single word of the prisoner's coming 
here for such a purpose. The second overt act is, that the prisoner 
did ti-aitorously intend to raise and levy war, and incite persons to 
invade Ireland with arms and men ; that he did incite Theobald 
Wolfe Tone to go beyond seas to incite France to invade this king- 
dom ; that he did endeavor to procure persons to go to France, and 
that he agreed with other persons, that they should be sent to 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 3g9 

France for the same purpose. Having stated these overt acts which 
are laid in the indictment, you will be pleased to recollect the evi- 
dence given by Cockayne. Cockayne did not say that the prisoner 
came over here for any such purpose as the overt act attributes to 
him. Then, as to the overt act of endeavoring to procure persons 
to go to France for the purpose of giving information to the enemy ; 
the witness said he met Mr. M'Nally ; he had known him in Eng- 
land ; Jackson was a clergyman ; he had known him also. Cock- 
ayne had professional business with Mr. M'Nally. Mr. M'Nally 
paid them a courtesy which any decent person would have been 
entitled to. They dined at his house, and met three or, four per- 
sons there ; they talked of the politics of Ireland ; of the dissatis- 
faction of the people ; but not a syllable of what is stated in the 
indictment ; not one word of any conspiracy ; Cockayne did not 
pretend to be able to give any account of any specific conversation ; 
He went to Newgate ; Rowan was then in confinement ; he some- 
times went by himself : sometimes met Tone, sometimes Jackson; 
he gave you an account of encouragement: what was it? Was 
there anything to support this indictment ? Let me remind you that 
you are to found your vei-dict on what the witness says and you 
believe, and not on what learned counsel may be instructed to state. 
Then what does the witness say ? He admits that he did not hear 
all the conversation. The crying injustice must strike you of 
making a man answerable for a part of a conversation, where the 
witness did not hear it all ; but take it as he has stated it, unquali- 
fied and unconstrued : how high was he wrought up by it ? He 
heard talk of somebody to go to France ; he was to carry papers ; 
he heard an expression of instructions to the French. What French 
— what instructions ? It might be to French manufacturers ; it 
might be to French traitors ; it might be to the French King ; it 
might be to the French convention. Do I mean to say that there 
was nothing by which a credulous or reasonable man might not have 
his suspicion raised, or that there was nothing in three or four men 
huddling themselves together in Newgate, and talking of an inva- 
sion ? No ; but my reasoning is this : that your verdict is to be 
founded on evidence of positive guilt established at the hazai'd of 
the personal punishment of the witness ; you are not to pick up the 
conjectures either of his malignity or credulity. I say that this 



370 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

man stands in defiance of your verdict, because it will be affected by- 
nothing but that irresistible evidence on which alone it ought to be 
founded. But what was the fact which Tone was to do, or any other 
person? It was an illegal one. By a late act, an English subject 
going to France is liable to six months' imprisonment. By a clause 
in the same statute the crime of soliciting a person to go is also 
punishable. The encouraging any person to go to that country was, 
therefore, exposing him to danger, but whether it was a motive of 
trade, or smuggling, or idle adventure, is not the question for joa. 
It is whether the intention was to convey an incitement to the 
French to make a descent on this kingdom, and endeavor to subvert 
the constitution of it. You have a simple question before you — 
has even the prosecutor sworn that he endeavored to do so ? I think 
not. The next overt act charged is, that he did compose and write 
a letter in order to be sent to William Stone, in which he traitor- 
ously desired Stone to disclose to certain persons in France the 
scheme and intention of Jackson, to send a person to inform them of 
the state of Ireland, for the pui'pose of giving support and effect to 
a hostile invasion of this country. You have heard these letters 
read. You must of necessity look on them in one or two important 
and distinct points of view. The iiret, perhaps, that will naturally 
strike you is, what are these letters? Do they sustain the allega- 
tions of the overt act? 'Are they letters requiring Stone to inform 
the Convention of this country being in such a state as to encourage 
an invasion? Does that pajjer support this allegation? God help 
us ! gentlemen of the jury. I know not in what state the property 
or life of any man will be if they are always to be at the mercy, and 
to depend on the possibility of his explaining either the real or pre- 
tended circumstances on which he corresponds with persons abroad. 
The letters are written apparently upon mercantile subjects — he 
talks of manufactures, of a firm, of prices changed, of different 
families, of differences among them, of overtures to be accepted of, 
of disputes likely to be settled by means of common mediation ; what 
is the evidence on which you can be supported in saying that manu- 
factures mean treason — that Nicholas means the war minister of 
France — the sister-in-law Ireland — that " the firm has been changed," 
means Danton has been guillotined, but that makes no alteration in 
the state of the house, meaning the circumstances of the revolution — 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 371 

that the change of prices and manufactures means anything else neces- 
sary to give consistency to the charge of treason. Give me leave to 
say that this ludicrous and barbarous consequence would follow from 
a rule of this sort, the idlest letter might be strained to any purpose. 
The simplicity of our law is, that a man's guilt should be proved by 
the evidence of witnesses on their oaths, which shall not be supplied 
by foncy, nor elicited by the ingenuity of any pei'son making sug- 
gestions to the wretched credulity of a jury that should be weak 
enough to adopt them. I come now to this. A letter produced 
imports on the face of it to be a letter of business, concerning manu- 
factures — another concerning family differences. In which way are 
they to be understood? I say with confidence, better it should be 
to let twenty men, that might have a criminal purpose in writing 
letters of this kind, escape, than fall into the dreadful alternative of 
making one man a victim to a charge of this kind not supported by 
such proof as could bring conviction on the mind of a rational jury. 
I do not think it necessary to state to you minutely the rest of 
these allegations of the overt acts. The charge against the prisoner 
is supported, and this is perhaps the clearest way of calling your 
attention to the evidence, either by the positive evidence of Cock- 
ayne ap to these facts, or by the written evidence which stands also 
on his testimonj' alone. Touching actual conspiracy he said nothing ; 
somebody was to go to France — he knew not for what — he had an 
idea on his mind for what it was — but never from any communica- 
tion with Jnckson. Tliere have been other lettei's read in evidence. 
Two of them contained duplicates of a sort of representation of the 
supposed state of Ireland. Cockayne says that he got the packet 
from Jackson, that he himself wrote the directions ; one addressed 
to Amsterdam, the other to Hamburgh. They were read, and they 
contain assertions, whether true or false I do not think material, of 
the state of this country : — if material at all, material only in their 
falsehood. The public are satisfied that these allegations are false. 
It is known to every man in this country, and must be known with 
great satisfaction by every honest man, that it is not in that state 
that could induce any but the most adventurous and wicked folly to 
try an experiment upon it. It is unnecessary for me to comment 
on the opinions contained in that paper ; there is a matter more 
material, and calling more loudly for your attention. It is stated 



372 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to be written for the purpose of inviting the persons governing in 
France to try a descent upon Ireland. This paper is evidence to 
support that charge ; you have heard it read. On what public sub- 
ject have you ever heard six men speak, and all to agree? Might 
not a stranger in a fit of despondency, imagine that an invasion 
might have a fatal effect on this country ? It is not impossible but 
if ten men were to make a landing, some mischief might happen. 
Then, again, what do I mean to argue? Is it that this letter bears 
no marks of the design imjDuted to it? No such thing. It is a let- 
ter that the most innocent man might write, but it is also such a one 
as a guilty man might write, but unless there was clear evidence of 
his guilt, he would be entitled to your verdict of acquittal. Though 
it was not expressly avowed, j'et I cannot help thinking that it was 
meant to lay some little emphasis on cei'tain names which I have met 
with in the newspapers — I am sure I have met the name of Laigne- 
lot in the debates of the convention — I have met the names of Horne 
Tooke and Stone in the English papers. I have read that Horne 
Tooke was tried for high treason and acquitted — that Stone made 
his escape into Switzerland. I believe it is said that there is a per- 
son of that name in confinement in England at present. But let me 
tell you, you are not to draw any inferences from circumstances 
of this kind against the prisoner ; let me tell you, it is the guilt 
of the man, and not the sound of names, by which his fate is to be 
decided. 

Other papers have been read. One seems to contain some forms 
of addresses. A letter said to come from Stone has been read to 
you. The letter to Beresford, said to be written by Jackson, has 
also been read to you. I have stated the material parts of the evi- 
dence. I have endeavored to submit my poor idea of the rule by 
which you ought to be guided. I see only one remaining topic to 
trouble you upon ; it appears to me to be a topic of the utmost 
importance. And, gentlemen, it is this. Who is the man that has 
been examined to support this charge ? One witness I I beseech 
you to have that engraven on your minds. The charge, in all its 
parts, stands only on the evidence of Cockayne ; there is no other 
evidence of any conversation, there is not a material letter read in 
this case that does not rest upon Cockayne's evidence, and that I am 
warranted in this assertion you will see to a demonstration when I 



JOHN P. CURUAN. 373 

remind the court that ho was the only witness, as I recollect, called 
to prove the handwriting of Jackson. On his testimony alone must 
depend the fact of their being his handwriting, of the inuendoes 
imputed to them, or the purpose with which they were sent. 

Gentlemen, I am scarcely justified in having trespassed so long on 
your patience. It is a narrow case. It is a case of a man charged 
with the highest and most penal offence known by our law, and 
charged l)y one witness only. And let me ask who that witness is. 
A man, stating that he comes from another country, armed with a 
pardon for treasons, committed in Ireland, but not in England 
whence he comes. What ! were you never on a jury before? Did 
you ever hear of a man forfeiting his life on the unsupported evi- 
dence of a single witness, and he an accomplice by his own confes- 
sion? What! his character made the subject of testimony and 
support ! — take his own vile evidence for his character. He was 
the foul traitor of his own client. What do you think now of his 
chai-acter? He was a spy upon his friend. He was the man that 
yielded to the tie of three oaths of allegiance, to watch the steps of 
his client for the bribe of government, with a pardon for the treasons 
he might commit ; and he liad impressed on his mind the conviction 
that he was liable to be executed as a traitor. Was he aware of his 
crime? — his pardon speaks it. Was he aware of the turpitude of 
his character ? — became with the cui'e ; he brought his witness in 
his pocket. To what ? To do away an offence which he did not 
venture to deny, that he had incautiously sworn that which was false 
in fact, though the jury did not choose to give it the name of wilful 
and corrupt perjury. Gracious God ! Is it, then, on the evidence 
of a man of this kind, with his pardon in his pocket, and his bribe — 
not yet in his pocket — that you can venture to convict the prisoner? 
He was to be taken care of. How so? Jackson owed him a debt — 
" I was to do the honorable business of a spy and informer, and to 
be paid for it in the common way ; it was common acreable work — 
treason and conspiracy. I was to be paid for it by the sheet." Do 
you find men doing these things in common life? I have now stated 
the circumstances by which, in my opinion, the credit of Cockayne 
ought to be reduced to nothing in your eyes. But I do not rest 
here. Papers were found in the chamber of Mr. Jackson ; the door 
was open — and, by the bye, that carelessness was not evidence of 



;]74r TREASURY OF EI-OQUENCE. 

any conscious guilt ; the papers were seized. Tliat there were some 
belonging to Jackson is clear, because he expressed an anxiety 
about some that are confessed not to have any relation to the sub- 
ject of this day's trial. I asked Cockayne if he had any papers in 
Jackson's room the night before he was arrested? He said not. I 
asked him if he had told any person that he had? He said not. 
Gentlemen, the only witness I shall call will be one to show you 
that he has in that sworn falsely. And let me here make one obser- 
vation to you, the strength and good sense of which has been repeat- 
ed an hundred times, and, therefore, rests on better authority than 
mine. Where a witness swears glibly to a number of circumstan- 
ces, where it is impossible to produce contradictory proof, and is 
found to fail in one, it shall overthrow all the others. And see how 
strongly the observation applies here : he swore to a conversation 
with Jackson as to what he said and did, well knowing that Jackson 
could not be a witness to disprove that unless the good sense of the 
jury should save his life, and enable him to become, in his turn, a 
pi'osecutor for the perjury. If on a point of this kind this man 
should be found to have forsworn himself, it cannot occasion any 
other sentiment but this, that if you have felt yourselves disposed 
to give anything like credit to his evidence wliere he has sworn to 
facts which he must have known, it is the key-stone of the arch iu 
his testimony, and if you can pluck it from its place, the remainder 
of the pile will fall iu ruins about his head. 

I will produce that witness — but, before I sit down, permit me, 
gentlemen of the jury, to remind you, that if every M'ord which 
Cockayne has here sworn were sworn in Westminster-Hall, the 
judges would immediately have said — There is not anything for the 
jury to decide upon ; the evidence of the indictment rests on him 
alone; there is no second witness. So does the transaction of the 
letters, for De Joncourt's testimony could not have satisfied the stat- 
ute ; it was not evidence to the same overt act as affecting Jackson 
personally, nor was it evidence of any distinct overt act ; it was 
merely that species of evidence, the abuse of which had been the 
cause of introducing the statute of William ; a mere collateral con- 
comitant evidence. The overt act was writing and putting into the 
post-office ; that was sworn to by Cockayne, and if he deserved 
credit, would go so far as to prove the fact by one witness. See 



JOHN P. CUKRAN. 375 

what the idea of the statute is ; it is that it must be an overt act 
brought home to the prisoner by each of the two witnesses swearing 
to it. If Do Joncourt's evidence stood single, it could not have 
brought anything home to Jackson. Cockayne swore the super- 
scription was his writing; he put the letters into the office. De 
Joncourt said nothing but that he found in the office a letter which 
he produced, and which Cockayne said was the one he had put into 
it. This observation appears to collect additional strength from this 
circumstance. Why did they not produce Tone? It is said they 
could not. I say they could. It was as easy to pardon him as to 
pardon Cockayne. But whether he was guilty or not, is no objec- 
tion. Shall it be said that the argument turns about and affects 
Jackson as much as it does the prosecutor? I think certainly not. 
Jackson, I believe it has appeared in the course of the evidence, and 
is matter of judicial knowledge to the court, has lain in prison for 
twelve months past, from the moment of his arrest to the moment of 
his trial. If he is conscious that the charge is false, it is impossible 
for him to prove that falsehood ; he was so circumstanced as that he 
could not procure the attendance of witnesses ; a stranger in the 
country, he could not tell whether some of the persons named were 
in existence or not. 

I have before apologized to you for trespassing upon your patience, 
and I have again trespassed — let me not repeat it. I shall only 
take the liberty of reminding you, that if you have any doubt, in a 
criminal case doubt should be acquittal ; that you are trying a case 
which if tried in England would preclude the jury from the possibility 
of finding a verdict of condemnation. It is for you to put it into 
the power of mankind to say, that that which should pass harmlessly 
over the head of a man in Great Britain shall blast him here ; — 
whether life is more valuable in that country than in this, or whether 
a verdict ma}'' more easily be obtained here in a case tending to 
establish pains and penalties of this severe nature. 



376 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Suspension of the Habeas Corpus. 



October 14th, 1796. 

I 

In Committee Ponsonby opposed the bill ; so did Curran : — 

^^ CONJURE the house to reflect seriously upon the moment that 
^1^ has beeu chosen by administration for the bringing in of this bill ; 

fl think it a melancholy proof of their want of temper and their 
want of judgment. My right honorable friend moved an 
amendment to the address in ftivor of the Roman Catholics ; it was a 
motion of the very utmost importance ; in the debates upon that motion 
the rights of the Roman Catholics were strongly urged, and as strongly 
opposed ; the disposition of the administration towards them was 
fully manifested, and the motion was rejected. Of the propriety of 
that rejection I will not speak — I cannot but lament it; I lament 
still more the effect that I am sure the making of the present bill the 
immediate sequel to that rejection, will have on the public mind. 
[He dwelt strongly upon the indiscretion of ministers, in thus ap- 
pearing to make the bill be an attack and an insult upon the Catho- 
lics ; and then replied to the arguments that had beeu used in 
support of the measure ; he adverted to the bills of the last session.] 
The Habeas Corpus act is almost the only remaining guardian of our 
liberties ; and the ministry have stabbed the guardian upon its post 
and in the dark. The house was exhausted by a long debate upon a 
subject of the last importance to the union and to the peace of the 
country ; those members of parliament who were likely to defend 
this last privilege of the people were withdrawn, and it was pot till 
the next morning that they were told in their beds, that the Habeas 
Corpus act was repealed. That sacred palladium of our libei'ties 
which was never suflered to sleep, ought not to have been stolen 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 377 

from us while we slumbered. I ask whj' the wisdom of our ances- 
tors has opposed so many checks to the progress of a bill through 
parliament ! I ask whether those checks are intended only to pre- 
vent the precipitation of measures of no moment, and that the dearest 
interests, and most sacred privileges of the subject, are to be left 
exposed to.all the fatal consequences of rashness and intemperance ? 
Befoi'e a bill can be laid before the house, its leave must be asked, 
and obtained for bringing it in — here it may be debated and opposed 
in its very first onset. It is then, by the leave of the house, to be 
read a first time, and upon this reading its principle is to be dis- 
cussed ; a day is then appointed for the further discussion of its 
principle upon a second reading ; it is then, if so far approved of, to 
be considered, and, if possible, to be amended by a committee of 
the whole house. Has the constitution no object in all these provis- 
ions for deliberation, or is such deliberation intended to be only upon 
trifles ? 

At two o'clock in the morning the house was moved for leave to 
bring in a bill to repeal the Habeas Corpus act ; at five minutes past 
two in the morning the bill was read a first time ; and, after grave 
and mature deliberation, the bill was ordered to be read, and was 
accordinglj' read, a second time at ten minutes after two in the morn- 
ing. Its principle was then fully considered and approved of; and 
at fifteen minutes after two in the morning, it was laid before a com- 
mittee of the whole house ! I ask, what peculiar and extraordinary 
urgency has been stated for refusing to such a bill the deliberation 
of eight-and-forty hours? and I insist, that whatever arguments 
have been offered for the necessity of passing such a bill at all, not 
one has been even insinuated for forcing it into a law without exam- 
ination and without reflection. I believe there was but one motive 
for it, and that was to create an unfounded alarm in the country, 
and, if possible, to silence the murmurs of the people. If ministers 
wish to excite alarm, they may succeed — they have already suc- 
ceeded. Their industrious reports of an invasion, of which I am 
convinced they have no apprehension, have nearly destroyed public 
credit in the South. I have it from what I believe the best author- 
ity, and upon such matters I can only speak from information, that 
in Cork and AVaterford discount is wholly stopped. If ministers 
hope to dismay the people into silence, I tell them they cannot ter- 



378 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

rify them into apathy, and that they may exasperate their abhorrence 
into violence. 

It remains now to consider the nature of what has been adduced 
as evidence of a treasonable confederation at present existing in the 
country, and which has been urged as the justification of the measure 
before the house. It cannot be denied that there has been treason 
in the country, because several men have been long since tried and 
convicted, and executed as traitors : but I do deny that thei'e is any 
evidence whatever before the house of a treason.able confederation 
now subsisting. I cannot too strongly reprobate the idea of con- 
sidering a passage in the speech from the throne as evidence upon 
which to pass a bill of attainder against the constitution ; if such a 
doctrine were to be endured, it would be at any time in the power 
of a corrupt minister to lay the people at his feet. < I insist that the 
assertions of the Attorney-General, even if they could be admitted 
as evidence, amount to no more than that informations have been 
sworn against certain individuals for crimes, the nature of which has 
not been disclosed, and that they have been apprehended. As to 
the late imprisonment of persons in the North, I will not say it was 
a mere pretext for the introduction of this bill ; I disclaim the idea 
of making so horrid a charge, but I cannot but say it is no founda- 
•tion whatever for such a bill : to say that it is, would be to say, these 
persons arc guilty — to pronounce them guilty without the forms of 
trial . Whatever facts have been stated to tne house have only tended 
to show that the bill is unnecessary ; men suspected of treason 
against the government may be apprehended and detained without 
the bill ; but confederation for the mere purpose of obtaining by 
constitutional moans, a reform in the representation, is not a circum- 
stance that can justify the house in abandoning the peopie, and laj-ing 
their liberty at the mercy of the executive power. I shall vote for 
Mr. Mason's leaving the chair. — Debaten, Vol. XVII., pp. 56-9. 

The division was 137 to 7. 



JOHN P. CUHRAN. 379 



Last Speech in the Irish Commons. 



Mat 15Tn, 1797. 

The reader has seen the decreasing minorities of the partywho gallantly struggled 
to maintain the parliamentary constitution of Ireland. But they grew daily more 
powerless. The people looked to the United Irish Executive, to France, to arms, to 
revolution. The government persisted in refusing Reform and Emancipation, con- 
tinued the suspension of the constitution, and incessantly augmented the despotism 
of their laws, the profligacy of their administration, and the violence of their soldiery 
— they trusted to intimidation. Under these circumstances, the opposition deter- 
mined to abandon the contest. They did unwisely. They might have embarrassed 
ministers seriously in the following year, and they did not so, nor did they join the 
military organization of the patriots. 

The pre-determined secession took place on the 15tli May, 1797. As the proceed- 
ings are of peculiar interest, I copy them from the Debates: — 

The expectatiouof the very important business which was announced for this even- 
ing, the Reform in the Representation, had filled the galleries at three o'clock. The 
speaker took the chair at four, and proceeded to business. Two debates followed 
— the one on the Lords' address, the other on the Reform. The house continued to 
sit until past five next morning. 

Lord Castlereagh pre-occupied the attention of the house by moving, that the ad- 
dress of the Lords on the subject of the treasonable papers, be now taken into 
consideration. The address contained strong expressions of the loyalty and affection 
of the house — alluded in very stroug term; to the enormity and exteut of this 
traitorous conspiracy — thanked his Majesty for the measures which had been 
already taken for restoring the due observation of the laws, and recommended to 
his adoption the most severe measures for the complete suppression of these dan- 
gerous disorders. His lordship animadverted on the danger of the conspiracy which 
had given occasion to this address — stated its object to be the overthrow of our 
most excellent constitution, and the separation of this country from Great Britain 
— that the evidence in proof of these assertions had been so full that even the most 
sceptic could not doubt, and so plain that no man could question the inferences 
which had been made by their lordships. His lordship then entered into a long 
and minute history of the society of United Irishman, repeating nearly what had 
been said on that subject in the report of the Secret Committee. He deprecated, 
in any debate which might arise on this question, the admixture of any foreign 
matter with this particular subject, which was simply an inquiry into the most ex- 
traordinary mass of treason which had ever appeared in the country; to introduce 
any other matter into the debate would be construed by the ignorauce of the coun- 



380 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

try as a proof that treason and traitors had abettors even within those walls. A 
speech of much vuhcmeuce against the United Irishmen &c., was concluded by a 
motion — "that thi; Commons should agree with their Lordships in this address." 

Mr. Grattan dechired that he did not on this subject wish to bring on a debate, as 
he would reserve the opinion which he meant to give at large on the state of the 
country, for the debate on the question of Reform. He could not help, however, 
declaring, that to that part of the address which expressed approbation of the, 
measures of government, he was bound in consistency not to give any approbation, 
neither could he do so of that part which prayed for a contiuance of coercion, be- 
cause he believed in his conscience that such measures could be productive of no 
good. 

Mr. Smith, after a short preface, moved an amendment, which alone could recon- 
cile him to the address. His amendment was in substance a request that his Majesty 
would use conciliatory measures to remove every pretext of discontent from the well- 
disposed, as well as measures of coercion for the prevention and punishment of 
conspiracy and treason — urging the necessity of correcting abuses, as well as adopt- 
ing strong laws to repress disaffection, &c. 

This amendment introduced much very animated conversation from Mr. George 
Ponsonby, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Jephson, Mr. Grattan, and Mr. Hoare, who supported 
the amendment, which was opposed by the Attorney-General, Denis Browne, Mr. 
Egan, Sir B. Roche, Mr. Alexander, Messrs. J. and M. Beresford, Mr. Ogle, Mr. 
Toler, and Mr. Anuesley. 

The most contentious topic in the debate was an expression which fell from Mr. 
Fletcher in the course of his speech, in which he said, that if coercive measures were 
to be pursued, the whole country must be coerced, for the spirit of insurrection had 
pervaded every part of it. 

Mr. M. Beresford ordered the clerk to take down these words, and the gallery was 
instantly cleared. When strangers were again admitted, the debate on the address 
still continued, and in the course of it Mr. J. 0. Beresford thought himself called 
on to defend the Secret Committee against an assertion which had fallen from Mr. 
Fletcher in the course of his speech. The assertion was in substance that he feared 
the people would be led to look on the report of the committee as fabricated rather 
to justify the past measures of Government, than to state facts! 

Mr. Fletcher contended that he had a right to animadvert on the report, but dis- 
claimed any design of imputing anything unfair to the members of that committee 
individually. 

In the course of the altercation which followed on this subject, Mr. Toler threat- 
ened, and actually did move an abstract resolution, declaring that the imputation 
conveyed in these words (of Mr. Fletcher) was an uufounded calumny on the re- 
port. He was at length, hovi'ever persuaded to withdraw his motion. The house 
then divided on Mr. Smith's amendment which was lost without a division. 



PAELIAMENTARY REFORM. 

Mr. W. Ponsonby, in a short prefatory speech, proposed his Resolutions on Par- 
liamentary Reform. Before he moved any of them specifically, he read them all to 
the house. They are in substance as follow : — 

" Resolved, that it is indispensably necessary to a fundamental reform of the rep- 
resentation, that all disabilities on account of religion be forever abolished, and 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 381 

that Catholics shall he admitted into the legislature, and all the great offices of state 
in the same extent, &c., as Protestants now are. 

" That It is the indispensable right of the people of Ireland to be fully and fairly 
represented in Parliament. 

"That in order that the people may be fully enabled to exercise that right, the 
privilege of returning members for cities, boroughs, &c., in the present form shall 
cease; that each county be divided into districts, consisting of 6,000 houses each, 
each district to return two members to parliament. 

" That all persons possessing freehold property to the amount of 40s. per annum; 
all possessed of leasehold interests, of the value of ; all possessed of a house 

of the value of ; all who have resided for a certain number of years in any 

great city or town, following a trade ; and all who shall be free of any city, &c., by 
birth, marriage, or servitude, shall vote for members of parliament. 

" That seats in parliament shall endure for number of years. (The blanks were 
left to be tilled up by the discretion of the house.)" — Z)e?)aies, Vol. XVII., pp. 
S27-30. 

Mr. Pelham moved and spoke for an adjournment, and was supported by Mr. D. 
Browne, Sir. M. Beresford, Sir H. Langrishe, Sir Frederick Flood, Mr. M. Mason, 
Mr. C. Osborne, Mr. William Smyth (afterwards judge, whom Curran followed); 
some opposing emancipation, some reform, some resisting the proposal of Ponsonby 
as ill-timed, or as Mr. Brown said, " thatching a house in a hurricane." The original 
motion was sustained by Mr. Stewart (of Killymoon), Sir J. Freake, George Pon- 
sonby, Mr. Jephson, the Knight of Kerry (Mr. Fitzgerald), Mr. Fletcher (after- 
wards judge), and Counsellor Hoare (of whom Curran used to say, his smile was 
like the shining of the brass plate on a coffin). 

W^ CONSIDER this as a measure of justice, with respect to the 
1^ Catholics and the people at large. The Catholics in former 

f times groaned under the malignant folly of penal laws — Avan- 
dercd like herds upon the earth, or gathered under some thread- 
bare grandee who came to Dublin, danced attendance at the Castle, 
was smiled on by the Secretary, and carried back to his miserable 
countrymen the gracious promise of favor and protection. They are 
no longer mean dependents, but owners of their country, and claim- 
ing simply and boldly, as Irishmen, the national privileges of men and 
natives of thtir country. [Upon this part of the question he went 
into a variety of very interesting topics, descriptive of their im- 
portance and their oppressions, which he attributed wholly to the 
wicked* propagation of religious antipathies, and concluded that 
their claim to perfect freedom in their own land could be denied only 
by the grossest malignity and tyranny.] 

I now pi-oceed to answer the objections to the measure. I was 
extremely shocked to see the agent of a foreign cabinet rise up in 
the assembly that ought to represent the Irish nation, and oppose a 



382 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

motion that was made on the acknowledged and deplored corruption 
which has been imported from his country. Such an opposition is 
a proof of the charge, which I am astonished he could venture upon 
at so awful a crisis. I doubt Avhether the charge, or this proof of it, 
' would appear most odious. However, I will examine the objections. 
It is said — It is not the time. This argument has become a jest in 
Ireland, for it has been used in all times ; in war, in peace, in quiet, 
and in disturbance. It is the miserable, dilatory plea of persever- 
ing and stupid corruption, that wishes to postpone its fate by a 
promise of amendment, w^hich it is resolved never to perform. Re- 
form has become an exception to the proverb that says there is a 
time for all things ; but for Reform there is no time, because at all 
times corruption is more profitable to its authors than public virtue 
and propriety, which they know must be fatal to their views. As 
to the present time, the objections to it ai'e a compound of the most 
unblushing impudence and folly. Forsooth it would seem as if the 
house had j'ielded through fear. Personal bravery or fear are inap- 
plicable to a jjublic assembly. I know no cowardice so despicable 
as the fear of seeming to be afraid. To be afraid of danger is not 
an imnatural sensation ; but to be brave in absurdity and injustice, 
merely from fear of having your sense or honesty imputed to your 
own apprehension, is a stretch of folly which I have never lieard of 
before. But the time is pregnant w'ith arguments very different, 
indeed, from those I have heard ; I mean the report of the Secret 
Committee and the dreadful state of the country. The allegation is 
that the people are not to have justice, because a rebellion exists 
within, and because we have an enemy at our gates — because, for- 
sooth, reform is only a pretext, and separation is the object of the 
leaders. If a rebellion exist, every good subject ought to be de- 
tached from it. But if an enemy threaten to invade us, it is only 
common sense to detach every subject from the hostile standard and 
bring him back to his duty and his country. 

The present miserable state of Ireland — its distractions, iffe dis- 
tresses, its bankruptcy — are the effects of the war, and it is the duty 
of the authors of that war to reconcile the people by the most timely 
and liberal justice ; the utmost physical strength should be called 
forth, and that can be done only by union. This is a subject so tre- 
mendous I do not wish to dwell on it ; I will therefore leave it ; I 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 38,3 

will support a Reform on its own merits, and as & measure of inter- 
nal peace at this momentous juncture. Its merits are admitted by 
the objection to the time, because the objection admits that at any 
other time it would be proper. For twenty years past there was no 
man of any note in England or Ireland who did not consider the 
necessity of it as a maxim ; they all saw and confessed that the 
people are not represented, and that the}' have not the benefit of a 
mixed monarchy. They have a monarchy which absorbs the two 
other estates, and, therefore, they have the insupportable expense of 
a monarchy, an aristocracy, and a democracy, without the simplicity 
or energy of any one of those forms of government. In Ireland 
this is peculiarly fatal, because the honest representation of the 
people is swallowed in the corruption and intrigue of a cabinet of 
another country. From this may be deduced the low estate of the 
Irish people ; their honest labor is wasted in pampering their be- 
trayers, instead of being employed, as it ought to be, in accommo- 
dating themselves and their children. On these miserable conse- 
quences of corruption, and which are all the fatal efiects of inadequate 
representation, I do not wish to dwell. To expatiate too much on 
them might be unfair, but to suppress them might be treason to the 
public. It is said that reform is only a pretence, and that separa- 
tion is the real object of leaders ; if this be so, confound the leaders 
by destroying the jiretext, and take the followers to yourselves. 
You say there are one hundred thousand ; I firmly believe thei-e is 
three times the number. So much the better for you ; if these se- 
ducers can attach so many followers to rebellion by the hope of re- 
form through blood, how much more readily will you engage them, not 
by the promise, but the possession, and without blood? You allude 
to the British fleet ; learn from it to avoid the fatal consequence that 
may follow even a few days' delay of justice. It is said to be only 
a pretext; I am convinced of the contrary — I am convinced the 
people are sincere, and would be satisfied by it. I think so from the 
perseverance in petitioning for it for a number of years ; I think so, 
because I think a monarchy, properly balanced by a fair representa- 
tion of the people, gives as perfect liberty as the most celebrated 
republics of old. But, of the real attraction of this object of reform, 
you have a proof almost miraculous ; the desire of reform has anni- 
hilated religious antipathj' and united the country. In the history 



384 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of mankind it is the only instance of so fatal a religious fanaticism 
being discarded by the good sense of mankind, instead of dying 
slowly by the development of its folly. And I am persuaded the 
hints thrown out this night to make the diflerent sects jealous of 
each other will be a detected trick, and will only unite them still 
more closely. The Catholics have given a pledge to their counti-y- 
men of their sincerity and their zeal, which cannot fail of producing 
the most firm reliance ; they have solemnly disclaimed all idea of 
what is called emancipation, except as a part of that reform without 
which their Presbyterian brethren could not be free. Reform is a 
necessary change of mildness for coercion. The latter has been 
tried ; what is its success ? The convention bill was passed to punish 
the meetings at Dungaunon and those of the Catholics ; the govern- 
ment considered the Catholic concessions as defeats that called for 
vengeance, and cruelly have they avenged them. But did that act, 
or those which followed it, put down those meetings ? The contrary 
was the fact. It concealed them most foolishly. When popular 
discontents are abroad, a wise government should put them into a 
hive of glass. You hid them. The association at first was small ; 
the earth seemed to drink it as a rivulet, but it only disappeai'cd for 
a season. A thousand sti'cams, through the secret windings of the 
earth, found their way to one course, and swelled its waters, until 
at last, too mighty to be contained, it burst out a great river, fertil- 
izing by its exudations or terrifying by its cataracts. This is the 
effect of our penal code ; it swelled sedition into rebellion. What 
else could be hoped from a system of terrorism. Fear is the most 
transient of all the passions ; it is the warning that nature gives for 
self-preservation. But when safety is unattainable the warning 
must be useless, and nature does not, therefore, give it. Adminis- 
tration, therefore, mistook the quality of penal laws ; they were sent 
out to abolish conventions, but they did not pass the threshold ; they 
stood sentinels at the gates. You think that penal laws, like great 
dogs, will wag their tails to their masters and bark only at their 
enemies. You are mistaken ; they turn and devour those they are 
meant to protect, and are harmless where they are intended to 
destroy. I see gentlemen laugh ; I see they are still veiy ignorant 
of the nature of fear ; it cannot last ; neither while it does can it 
be concealed. The feeble glimmering of a forced smile is a light 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 335 

that makes the cheek look paler. Trust me, the times are too hu- 
manized for such systems of government. Humanity will not exe- 
cute them, but humanity will abhor them and those who wish to rule 
by such means. This is not theory ; the experiment has been tried 
and proved. You hc^jed much, and, I doubt not, meant well by 
those laws ; but they have miserably failed you ; it is time to try 
milder methods. You have tried to force the people ; the rage of 
your penal laws was a storm that only drove them in groups to shel- 
ter. Your convention law gave them that organization which is 
justly an object of such alarm ; and the very proclamation seems to 
have given them arms. Before it is too late, therefore, try the bet- 
ter force of reason, and conciliate them by justice and humanity. 
The period of coercion in Ireland is gone, nor can it ever return 
until the people shall return to the folly and to the natural weakness 
of disunion. Neither let us talk of innovation ; the progress of na- 
ture is no innovation. The increase of people, with the growth of 
the mind, is no innovation ; it is no way alarming unless the growth 
of our minds lag behind. If we think otherwise, and think it an 
innovation to depart from the folly of our infancy, we should come 
here in our swaddling-clothes ; we should not innovate upon the 
dress, more than the understanding of the cradle. As to the system 
of peace now proposed, jmi must take it on principles ; they are 
simply two — the abolition of religious disabilities and the represen- 
tation of the people. I am confident the eflects would be every- 
thing to be wished. The pi-esent alarming discontent will vanish, 
the good will be separated from the evil-intentioned ; the friends of 
mixed government in Irelaud are many ; every sensible man must 
see that it gives all the enjoyment of rational liberty if the people 
have their due place in the state. This system would make us in- 
vincible against a foreign or domestic enemy ; it would make the 
empire strong at this iraportant crisis ; it would restore us to liberty, 
industry, and peace, which I am satisfied can never by any other 
means be restored. Instead, therefore, of abusing the people, let 
us remember that there is no physical strength but theirs, and con- 
ciliate them by justice and reason. I am censured heavily for hav- 
ing acted for them in the late prosecutions. I feel no shame at such 
a charge, except that, at such a time as this, to defend the people 
should be held out as an imputation upon a king's counsel, when the 



386 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

people are prosecuted by the state. I think every counsel is the 
property of his fellow-subjects. If, indeed, because I wore his 
Majesty's gown, I had declined my duty or done it weakly or treach- 
erously ; if I had made that gown a mantle of hypocrisy, and be- 
trayed my client or sacriticed him to any personal view, I might, 
perhaps, have been thought wiser by those who have blamed me ; 
but I should have thought myself the basest villain upon earth. 
The plan of peace, proposed by a Reform, is the only means that I 
and my friends can see left to save us. It is certainly a time for 
decision, and not for half measures. I agree that unanimity is in- 
dispensable. The house seems pretty nearly unanimous for force ; 
I am sorry for it, for I bode the worst from it. I will retire from a 
scene where I can do no good — where I certainly would interrupt 
that unanimity. I cannot, however, go without a parting entreaty 
that gentlemen will reflect on the awful responsibility in which they 
stand to their country and to their conscience, before they set the 
example to the people of abandoning the constitution and the law, 
and resorting to the terrible expedient of force. — Debates, Vol. 
XVII., pp. 553—8. 

Grattan followed him, closing the debate, his speech, and the attendance of the 
opposition, in these words : 

Before they are to be reformed, rebellion, you tell us, must be subdued. You 
tried that experiment in America. America required self-legislation ; you attempted 
to subdue America by force of angry laws, and by force of arms — you exacted of 
America unconditional submission — the stamp act and the tea tax were only pre- 
texts. So you said. The object, you said, was separation. So here the Reform of 
P.arliament, you say, and Catholic Emancipation are only pretexts : the object, you 
say, is separation. And here you exact unconditional submission: "You must 
SUBDUE BEFOKE YOU iiEFORM " — indeed ! Alas, you think so ; but you forget you 
subdue by reforming. It is the best conquest yon can obtain over your own people. 
But let me suppose you succeed ; what is your success } A military government, a 
perfect despotism, a hapless victory over the principles of a mild government .and a 
mild constitution. But what may be the ultimate consequence of such a victory .' — 
a separation. Let us suppose that the war continues, and that your conquest over 
your own people is interrupted by a French Invasion. What would be your situa- 
tion then ? I do not wish to think of It ; but I wish you to think of it, and to make 
a better preparation against such an event than such conquests and such victories. 
When you consider the state of your arms abroad, and the ill-assured state of your 
government at home, precipitating on such a system, surely you should pause a 
little. Even on the event of a peace you are ill-secured against a future war, which 
the state of Ireland, under such a system, would be too apt to invite; but in the 
eventof the continuation of the war, your system is perilous, indeed. I speak with- 



JOHN P. CUKRAN. 387 

out asperity — I speak without resentment; I speak, perhaps, my delusion, but it 
is my heart-felt conviction — I speak my apprehension for the immediate state of 
. our liberty, and for the ultimate state of the empire. I see, or I imagine I see, in 
this system, everything which is dangerous to both. I hope I am mistaken — at 
least, I hope I exaggerate; possibly I may. If so, I shall acknowledge my error 
with more satisfaction than is usual in the acknowledgment of error. I cannot, liow- 
ever, banisli from my memory tlie lesson of the American war ; and yet at that time 
the English government was at the head of Europe, and was possessed of resources 
comparatively unbroken. If that lesson has no effect on ministers, surely I can 
suggest notliing that will. We have olfered you our measure — you will reject it; 
we deprecate yours — you will persevere. Having no hopes left to persuade or dis- 
suade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no more, and, AFTER 
THIS DAY, SHALL NOT ATTEND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ! — Z)e6aJcs, 
Vol. XVII., pp. 560-70. 

The question being put on the adjournment it was carried: — for it, 170; against 
it, 30. 

The opposition ceased to attend, and the parliament, after a few sittings, was 
adjourned, in a speecli from the Lord Lieutenant, of unusual length, on the 3rd of 
July, 1797. Thus, in the twilight of his country, ended Curran's parliamentary 
career; but iu the awful iiight which followed, he was a beacon. 



388 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



For Peter Finnerty, Publisher of " The Press," 

[LIBEL. ] 



December 22nd, 1797. 

The Government and the United Irishmen were now face to face, the former armed 
with a full code of coercion, and a large army and unscrupulous agents to support 
it ; — the latter with a good cause, the organization given by Tone, and the prospect 
of French aid. Each party tried to strengthen itself by conciliation and intimida- 
tion. Among the government instruments were spies (such as Maguane and others, 
chronicled in Dr. Madden's work), "the battalioa of testimony" (Bird, Newell, 
O'Brien, &c.), free quarters, prosecutious, bribery, patronage and calumny. 

One of the best auxiliaries summoned by the United Irishmen was " The Press" 
newspaper. 

The first number of it was published in Dublin, on Thursday, the 28th of Septem- 
ber, 1797, and was thence continued on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, until 
Tuesday, the 13th of March, 1798, when the G9th and last number was seized by the 
government. It was not, like the " Northern Star," a chronicle of French politics. 
It was a true propagandist organ of Liberal and National opinions, filled with 
essays, letters and addresses of great ability. Arthur O'Connor mainly originated 
it, and he, Thomas Emmet, Drennan, Sampson, &c., wrote it. 

Government naturally longed to crush such a paper, as it had done the " Northern 
Star," but raw force was premature for Dublin, so they waited for a libel, and, as 
they gave plenty of provocation, they waited not long. They found one, which irri- 
tated them deeply, while it gave them a good opening, in a letter published on 
Thursday, the 26th of October, 1797, addressed to the Lord Lieutenant, signed 
" Marcus." Most of the letter is set out in the indictment; so are the legal facts 
which were the text of it, but it is right to say something more of them. 

William Orr was a Presbyterian former, resident at Farraushane, in the County 
of Antrim — a man of pious, gentle and gallant character ; a tall, athletic and hearty 
fellow, too, and popular exceedingly. He was arrested in 1796, under the Insurrec- 
tion Act (passed in the February of that year), for having, in April, 179G, admin- 
istered the United Irish oath to Hugh Wheatly, a private in the Fifeshire Fencibles. 
He was indicted at Carrickfergus, on the 17th of April, 1797, and tried on Saturday, 
16th of September, 1797, before Chief Baron Lord Yelverton. The chief witness 
was Wheatly, who deposed that Orr acted as chairman or secretary of a Baronial 
Committee in Antrim, where Wheatly was induced to go, and was there forced to 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 389 

take the oath. Lindsay, a private in the same corps, swore that he saw the oath 
administered, but did not hear it. Ciirran and Sampson, Orr's counsel, contended 
that this was a case for a prosecution for high treason; but Yelverton decided 
otherwise, and cliarged for a conviction. The jury retired at seven at night, and 
came into court at six o'clock on Sunday moruiug, and after much confusion (from 
conscience or intoxication), gave iii a verdict of Guilty, with a recommendation to 
mercy, which Yelverton sent by express to the Castle. On Monday, the 18th, Cur- 
ran moved for a new trial, on the affidavit of two of the jurors, stating the drunken- 
ness of some of the jurors, and the intimidation used to one of the deponents. He 
had an affidavit from a third juror, swearing that he was deceived into the verdict; 
but Orr was sentenced to be hanged on the 7th of October. Orr declared at the 
close of the trial that he was innocent. Various attempts were made to save him. 
His brother James signed a declaration of his guilt and a prayer for mercy, in Wil- 
liam's name, and got it backed by the gentry ; but William disclaimed it. It was 
also sworn by a Presbyterian clergyman that Wheatly had confessed himself guilty 
of murder, perjury and other crimes. In consequence of all this, Orr was thrice 
respited, and judging from the conciliatory and beseeching tone of " The Press" 
(No. 5), Government seems to have had an opportunity of making themselves pop- 
ular, and weakening the United Irishmen by a just leniency. They preferred the 
harsh course, and on Saturday, the llth of October, Orr was hanged, outside Car- 
rickfergus, amid a mass of troops. He distributed a written paper, declaring his 
innocence, and died calmly and nobly. He left five children, and a wife, about again 
to be a mother. 

Indignation was nigh universal. Medals with " Remember Orr ! " were circulated ; 
his name became a watchword (and continued so, as Sheares' proclamation proves; ; 
" The Ministers in Orr's place " was a toast even in England, and Fox spoke of him 
as a martyr. That he was a United Irishman is clear ; but that he gave Wheatly the 
oath, or was therefore guilty in law, is not probable. Guilty or not, his execution 
for such a crime, on such evidence, and after such a verdict, was a murder! So it 
was treated in the letter of " Marcus," The author was a Mr. Deane Swift a fre- 
quent contributor to " The Press." 

On Tuesday, the 31st of October, Major Sirr arrested Peter Finnerty at 02 Abbey- 
street ("The Press " office), for this publication, under a Judge's warrant, and put 
him into Newgate, and on Thursday he was brought, haudcufl'ed, before Mr. Jame- 
son, K. C, acting Judge at the Commission Court; true bills were found; he was 
indicted in tlie dock, being refused liberty to bail. He was thence sent back to New- 
gate, where he was exposed to threats to force a confession, but he was steady, and 
on Friday, the 22d of December, was tried before Justice Downes at the Commission 
Court. The indictment stated, 

" That at a general assizes and general gaol delivery, holden at Carrickfergus, in 
and for the County of Antrim, on the 17th day of April, in the thirty-seventh year 
of the King, before the Honorable Matliias Finucane, one of the judges of his Maj- 
esty's Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, and the Honorable Denis George, one of 
the Barons of his Majesty's Court of Exchequer in Ireland, Justices and Commis- 
sioners assigned to deliver the gaol of our said Lord the King, in and for the County 
of Antrim, of the several prisoners and malefactors therein, one William Orr, late of 
Farranshaue, in said County of Antrim, yeoman, was in lawful manner indicted for 
feloniously administering a certain oath and engagement, upon a book, to one Hugh 
Wheatly; which oath and engagement imported to bind the said Hugh Wheatly,' 



390 TREASUET OF ELOQUENCE. 

who then and there took the same, to be of an association, brotherhood, and Society, 
formed for seditious purposes; and also for feloniously causing, procuring, and 
inducing said Hugh Wheatly, to take an oath of said import last mentioned; and 
also for feloniously administering to said Hugh Wheatly another oath, importing to 
bind said Hugh Wheatly not to inform or give evidence against any brother, asso- 
ciate, or confederate, of a certain society then and there formed ; and also for feloni- 
ously causing, procuring, and seducing said Hugh Wheatly to take an oath of said 
import last mentioned. And afterwards at Carrickfergus aforesaid, before the Right 
Honorable Barry Lord Yelverton, Lord Chief Baron of his Majesty's Court of 
Exchequer in Ireland, and the Honorable Tankerville Chamberlain, one of his Maj- 
esty's Justices of his Court of Chief Pleas in Ireland, at a general assizes, &c., on the 
16th day of September, in the 37th year of the King, said William Orr by the verdict 
of a certain jury of said county of Antrim, between our said Lord the King and said 
William Orr, taken of and for the felony aforesaid in due manner, was tried, con- 
victed, and attainted, and for the same was duly executed; and that he, the said 
Peter Finnerty, well knowing the premises, but being a wicked and ill-disposed 
person, and of unquiet conversation and disposition, and devising and intending to 
molest and disturb the peace and public tranquillity of this kingdom of Ireland ; and 
to bring and draw the trial aforesaid, and the verdict thereon, for our said Lord the 
King against this William Orr given, and the due course of law in that behalf had, 
as aforesaid. Into hatred, contempt, aud scandal, with all the liege subjects of our 
said Lord the King; and to persuade, and cause the subjects of our said Lord the 
King to believe that the trial aforesaid was unduly had, and that the said William 
Orr did undeservedly die in manner aforesaid, and that his Excellency John Jetferys, 
Earl Camden, the Lord Lieutenant of this kingdom, after the conviction aforesaid, 
ought to have extended to the said William Orr, his Majesty's gracious pardon of 
the felonies afoi'esaid ; and that in not so extending such pardon, he, the said Lord 
Lieutenant, had acted inhumanly, wickedly, and unjustly, and in a manner unwor- 
thy of the trust which had been committed to him by our said Lord the King in that 
behalf; and that the said Lord Lieutenant in his government of this kingdom, had 
acted unjustly, cruelly, aud oppressively, to his Majesty's subjects therein : And 
the said Peter Finnerty, to fulfil and bring to effect his most wicked and detestable 
devices and intentions aforesaid, on the 26th of October, in the 37th year of the 
King, at Mountrath Street aforesaid, city of Dublin aforesaid, falsely, wickedly, 
maliciously, and seditiously did print and publish, and cause and procure to be 
printed and published, in a certain newspaper entitled ' The Press,' a certain false, 
wicked, malicious and seditious libel, of and concerning the said trial, conviction, 
attainder, and execution of the said William Orr, as aforesaid, aud of aud concern- 
ing the said Lord Lieutenant and his government of this kingdom, and his Majesty's 
Ministers employed by him in his government of this kingdom, according to the 
tenor and effect following, to wit : — 

" ' The death of Mr. Orr (meaning the execution of the said William Orr) the 
nation has pronounced one of the most sanguinary and savage acts that had dis- 
graced the laws. In perjury, did you not hear, my Lord (meaning the said Lord 
Lieutenant), the verdict (meaning the verdict aforesaid) was given.? Perjury 
accompanied with terror, as terror has marked every step of your government 
(meaning the government of this kingdom aforesaid, by the said Lord Lieutenant). 
Vengeance and desolation were to fall on those who would not plvmge themselves 
in blood. These were not strong enough : against the express law of the land, not 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 391 

only was drink introduced to the jury (meaning the jury aforesaid), but drunken- 
ness itself, beastly and criminal drunkenness, was employed to procure the murder 
of-a better man (meaning tlio said execution of the said William Orr) than any that 
now sniTounds you (meaning the said Lord Lieutenant).' 

" And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and effect following, to 
wit : — 

" ' Repentance, which is a slow virtue, hastened, however, to declare the inno- 
cence of the victim (meaning the said WilUam Orr) ; the mischief (meaning the said 
conviction of the said William Orr) which perjury had done, truth now stepped for- 
ward to repair. Neither was she too late had humanity formed any part of your 
counsels (meaning the counsels of the said Lord Lieutenant). Stung with remorse, 
on the return of reasou, part of his jury (meaning the jury aforesaid) solemnly and 
soberly made oath that their verdict (meaning the verdict aforesaid) had been given 
under the unhappy influence of intimidation and drink ; and m the most serious affi- 
davit that ever was made, by acknowledging their crime, endeavored to atone to 
God and to their country for the sin into which they had been seduced.' 

"And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and efiect following, to 
wit: — 

" ' And though the innocence of the accused (meaning the said William Orr) had 
even remained doubtful, it was your duty (meaning the duty of the said Lord Lieu- 
tenant), my Lord, and you (moaning the said Lord Lieutenant) had no exemption 
from that duty, to have interposed your arm and saved him (meaning the said Wil- 
liam Orr) from the death (meaning the execution aforesaid) that perjury, drunken- 
ness and reward had prepared for him (meaning the said William Orr). Let not 
the nation be told that you (meaning the Lord Lieutenant) are a passive instrument 
in the hands of others; if passive you be, then is your office a shadow indeed. If 
an active instrument, as you ought to be, you (meaning the said Lord Lieutenant) 
did not perform the duty which the laws required of you; you (meaning the said 
Lord Lieutenant) did not exercise the prerogative of mercy; that mercy which the 
constitution had entrusted to you (meaning the said Lord Lieutenant) for the safety 
of the subject, by guarding him from the oppression of wicked men. Innocent it 
appears he (meaning the said William Orr) was; his blood (meaning the blood of 
the said William Orr) has been shed, and the precedent indeed is awful.' 

" And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and effect following, to 
wit: — 

" ' But suppose the evidence of Wheatly had been true, what was the offence of 
Mr. Orr (meaning the said WiUiam Orr) ? Not that he had taken an oath of blood 
and extermination, for then he had not suffered; but that he (meaning the said 
William Orr) had taken an oath of charity and of union, of humanity and of peace, he 
(meaning the said William Orr) has suffered. Shall we then be told that your gov- 
ernment (meaning the government of this kingdom aforesaid, by the said Lord 
Lieutenant), will conciliate public opinion, or that the people will not continue to 
look for a better ? ' 

" And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and effect following, that is 
to say : — 

" ' Is it to be wondered that a successor of Lord Fitzwilliam should sign the 
death-warrant of Mr. Orr (meaning the said William Orr) .' Mr. Pitt had learned 
that a merciful Lord Lieutenant was unsuited to a government of violence. It was 
no compliment to the native clemency of a Camden, that he sent you (meaning the 



392 TREASURE OF ELOQUENCE 

isaid Lord Lieutenant) into Ireland, and what has been our portion under the change 
but massacre and rape, military murders, desolation and terror.' 

" And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and effect here following, 
that is to say : — 

" ' Feasting in your castle, in the midst of your myrmidons and bishops, you 
(meaning the said Lord Lieutenant) have little concerned yourself about the expelled 
and miserable cottager whose dwelling, at the moment of your mirth, was in flames, 
his wife and his daughter then under the violation of some commissioned ravager, 
his sou agonizing on the bayonet, and his helpless infants crying in vain for mercy. 
These are lamentations which stain not the house of carousal. Under intoxicated 
counsels (meaning the counsels of the said Lord Lieutenant), the constitution has 
reeled to its centre, justice is not only blind drunk, but deaf, like Festus, to the 
words of soberness and truth.' 

" And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and effect here following, to 
wit: — 

" Let, however, the awful execution of Mr. Orr (meaning the execution aforesaid 
of the said William Orr) be a lesson to all unthinking juries, and let them cease to 
flatter themselves that tlie soberest recommendation of theirs, and of the presiding 
judge, can stop the course of carnage, which sanguinary, and I do not fear to say, 
unconstitutional laws have ordered to be loosed. Let them remember, that, like 
Macbeth, the servants of the crown have waded so far in blood, that they find it 
easier to go ou than to go back.' 

" In contempt, &c., and against the peace, &c." 

The Counsel for the prosecution were the Attorney-General (Arthur Wolfe), 
Prime Sergeant, Solicitor-General (Toler), Messrs. Ridgeway, Townsheud, and 
Worthington; for the defeuce, Curran, Fletcher, M'Nally, Sampson, Sheares and 
Orr. The Attorney-General stated the case, and produced witnesses, who proved 
printing and publication. Mr. Fletcher opened the defence, and called Lord Yelver- 
ton and Mr. E. Cooke (Chief Clerk in the Secretary's oflice), to prove the truth of 
the libel ; but the evidence was soon stopped, as illegal, and then Cui-ran spoke as 
follows : — 

ij^pEVER did I feel myself so sunk under the importance of any 
^^k^ cause. To speak to a question of thi.s kind, at any time, 
*^ would require the greatest talent and the most mature dclib- 
J eration ; but to be o1)liged, without either of those advan- 
tages, to speak to a subject that has so deeply shaken the feelings 
of this already irritated and agitated nation, is a task that fills me 
with embarrassment and dismaJ^ 

Neither my learned colleague nor myself received any instruction 
or license until after the jury were actually sworn, and we both of 
us came here under an idea that we should not take any part in the 
trial. This circumstance I mention, not as an idle apology for an 
effort that cannot be the subject of either praise or censure, but as a 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 393 

call upon you, gentlemen of the, jury, to supply the defects of my 
efforts, hy :i double exeilion of your attention. 

Perhaps I ought to regret that I cannot begin with any compli- 
ment, that may recommend me or my client personally to your 
favor. A more artful advocate would probably begin his address 
to you by compliments on your patriotism, and by felicitating his 
client upon the happy selection of his jury, and upon that vinsus- 
pected impartiality in which, if he was innocent, he must be safe. 
You must be conscious, gentlemen, that such idle verbiage as that, 
could not convey either my sentiments, or my client's upon that 
subject. You know, and we know, upon what occasion you arc 
come, and by whom you have been chosen ; you are come to try an 
accusation professedly brought forward by the state, chosen by a 
sheriff who is appointed by our accuser. 

The Attorney-Geueral, interrupting Mr. Curran, said the sheriff was elected by 
the city and that the observation was therefore unfounded. 

Be it so [continued Mr. Curran] : I will not now stop to inquire 
whose property the city may be considered to be : but the learned 
gentleman seems to forget, that the election by that city, to whom- 
soever it may belong, is absolutely void without the approbation of 
that very Lord Lieutenant, who is the prosecutor in this case. I do 
therefore repeat, gentlemen, that not a man of you has been called 
to that box by the voice of my client ; that he has had no power to 
object to a single man among you, though the crown has ; and that 
you yourselves must feel under what influence you are chosen, or for 
what qualifications you are particularly selected. At a moment when 
this wretched land is shaken to its centre by the dreadful conflicts of 
the difl'orent branches of the community ; between those who call 
themselves the partisans of liberty, and those that call themselves 
the partisans of power ; between the advocates of infliction and the 
advocates of suffering ; upon such a question as the present, and at 
such a season, can any man be at a loss to guess to what class of 
character and opinion, a friend to either party would resort for that 
jury, which was to decide between both? I trust, gentlemen, you 
know me too well to suppose that I could be capable of treating you 
with any personal disrespect ; I am speaking to you in the honest 
confidence of your fellow-citizen. When I allude to those unworthy 



394- TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

imputations of supposed bias, or passion, or partiality, that may have 
marked you out for your present situation, I do so, in order to warn 
you of the ground on which you stand, of the point of awful respon- 
sibility in which you are placed, to your conscience, and to your 
country; and to remind j'ou, that if you have been put into that 
box from any unw'orthy reliance on your complaisance or your ser- 
vility, you have it in your power, before you leave it, to refute and 
to punish so vile an expectation, by the integrity of your verdict ; 
to remind you, too, that you have it in your power to show to as 
many Irishmen as yet linger in this country, that all law and justice 
have not taken their flight with our prosperity and peace ; that the 
sanctity of an oath, and the honesty of a juror are not yet dead 
amongst us ; and that if our courts of justice are superseded by so 
many strange and terrible tribunals, it is not because they are defi- 
cient either in wisdom or virtue. 

Gentlemen, it is necessary that you should have a clear idea, first, 
of the law by which this question is to be decided ; secondly, of the 
nature and object of the prosecution. As to the first, it is my duty 
to inform you, that the law respecting libels has been much changed 
of late. Heretofore, in consequence of some decisions of the judges 
in Westminster-Hall, the jury was conceived to have no province but 
that of finding the truth of the inuendos, and the fact of publica- 
tion ; but the libellous nature of that publication, as well as the guilt 
or innocence of the publication, were considered as exclusively 
belonging to the court. 

In a system like that of law, which reasons logicalljs no one 
erroneous principle can bo introduced, without producing every 
other that can be deducible from it. If in the premises of any 
argument you admit one erroneous proposition, nothing but bad 
reasoning can save the conclusions from falsehood. So it has been 
with this encroachment of the court upon the province of the jury 
with respect to libels. The moment the court assumed as a prin- 
ciple that they, the court, were to decide upon every thing but the 
publication ; that is, that they were to decide upon the question of 
libel or no libel, and upon the guilt or innocence of the intention, 
which must form the essence of every crime, the guilt or innocence 
must of necessity have ceased to be material. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 395 

You see, gentlemen, clearly, that the question of intention is a 
mere question of fact. 

Now the moment the court determined that the jury was not to 
try that question, it followed of necessity that it was not to be tried 
at all ; for the court cannot try a question of fact. When the court 
said that it was not triable, there was no way of fortifying that ex- 
traordinary proposition, except bj' asserting that it was not material. 
The same erroneous reasoning carried them another step, still more 
mischievous and unjust ; if the intention had been material, it must 
have been decided upon as a mere fact, under all its circumstances. 
Of these circumstances, the meanest understanding can see that the 
leading one must be the truth or the falsehood of the publication ; 
but having decided the intention to be immaterial, it followed that 
the truth must bo equally immaterial, and under the law so dis- 
torted, any man in England who published the most undeniable 
truth and with the purest intention, might be punished for a crime 
in the most ignominious manner without imposing on the prosecutor 
the necessity of proving his guilt, or his getting any opportunity of 
showing his innocence. 

I am not in the habit of speaking of legal institutions with dis- 
respect ; but I am warranted in condemning that usurpation upon 
the right of juries, by the authority of that statute by which your 
jurisdiction is restored. For that restitution of justice, the British 
subject is indebted to the splendid exertions of Mr. Fox and Mr. 
Erskine, those distinguished supporters of the constitution and of 
the law ; and I am happy to say to you, that though we can claim no 
share in the glory they have so justly acquired, we have the full ben- 
efit of their success ; for j'ou are now sitting under a similar act 
passed in this country, which makes it your duty and right to decide 
on the entire question upon the broadest grounds, and under all its 
circumstances, and of course, to determine by your verdict, whether 
this publication be a false and scandalous libel ; false in fact, and 
published with the seditious purpose alleged, of bringing the govern- 
ment into scandal, and instigating the people to insui-rection. 

Having stated to you, gentlemen, the great and exclusive extent 
of your jurisdiction, I shall beg leave to suggest to you a distinction 
that will strike you at first sight ; and that is, the distinction between 
public animadversions upon the character of private individuals, and 



39G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

those which are written upon measures of government, and the per- 
sons who conduct them. 

The former may be called personal, and the latter political publi- 
cations. No two things can be more different in their nature, nor in 
the point of view in which they ai-e to be looked on by a jury. The 
criminality of a mere personal libel consists in this, that it tends to a 
breach of the peace ; it tends to all the vindictive paroxysms of 
exasperated vanity, or to the deeper or more deadly vengeance of 
irritated pride. The truth is, few men see at once that they cannot 
be hurt so much as they think by the mere battery of a newspaper. 
They do not reflect that every character has a natural station, from 
which it cannot be effectually degraded, and beyond which it cannot 
be raised by the bawling of a news-hawker. If it is wantonly 
aspersed, it is but for a season, and that a short one, when it 
emerges, like the moon from a passing cloud, to its original bright- 
ness. It is right, however, that the law, and that you, should hold 
the strictest hand over this kind of public animadversion, that forces 
humility and innocence from their retreat into the glare of public 
view ; that wounds and terrifies, that destroys the cordiality and the 
peace of domestic life, and that, without eradicating a single vice, or 
single folly, plants a thousand thorns in the human heart. 

In cases of that kind, I perfectly agree with the law as stated from 
the bench ; in such cases, I hesitate not to think, that the truth of a 
charge ought not to justify its publication. If a private man is 
charged with a crime, he ought to be prosecuted in a court of justice, 
where he may be punished, if it is true, and the accuser, if it is false. 
But {av differently do I deem of the freedom of political publication. 
The salutary I'estraint of the former species, which I talked of, is 
found in the general law of all societies whatever ; but the more 
enlarged freedom of the press, for which I contend, in political pub- 
lication, I conceive to be founded in the peculiar nature of the British 
constitution, and to follow directly from the contract on which the 
British government hath been placed by the Revolution. By the 
British constitution, the power of the state is a trust, committed by 
the people, upon certain conditions ; by the violation of which, it 
maybe abdicated by those who hold, and resumed by those who con- 
ferred it. The real security, therefore, of the British sceptre, is, the 
sentiment and opinion of the people, and it is, consequently, their 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 397 

duty to observe the coatluct of the government ; and it is the privi- 
lege of every man to give them full and just information upon that 
important subject. Hence the liberty of the press is inseparably 
twined with the liberty of the people. 

The press is the great public monitor : its duty is that of the his- 
torian and the witness, that " nil falsi audeat, nil veri non audeat 
dicere ; " that its horizon shall extend to the farthest verge and limit 
of truth ; that it siiall speak truth to the king in tbe hearing of the 
people, and to the people in the hearing of the king ; that it shall not 
perplex either the one or the other with false alarm, lest it lose its 
characteristic veracity, and become an unheeded warner of real dan- 
ger ; lest it should vainly warn them of that sin, of which the inevi- 
table consequence is death. This, gentlemen, is the great privilege 
upon which you are to decide ; and I have detained you the longer, 
because of the late change of the law, and because of some observa- 
tions that have been made, which I shall find it necessary to com- 
pare with the principles I have now laid down. 

And now, gentlemen, let us come to the immediate subject of the 
trial, as it is brought before you, by the charge in the indictment, to 
which it ought to have been confined ; and also, as it is presented to 
you by the statement of the learned counsel who has taken a much 
wider range than the mere limits of the accusation, and has endeav- 
ored to force upon your consideration extraneous and irrelevant facts, 
for reasons which it is not my duty to explain. 

The indictment states simply that Mr. Finnerty has published a 
false and scandalous libel upon the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, tend- 
ing to bring his government into disrepute, and to alienate the affec- 
tions of the people ; and one would have expected, that, without 
stating any other matter, the counsel for the crown would have gone 
directly to the proof of this allegation ; but he has not done so ; he 
has gone to a most extraordinary length, indeed, of preliminary 
observation, and an allusion to facts, and sometimes an assertion of 
facts, at which, I own, I was astonished, until I saw the drift of 
these allusions and assertions. Whether you have been fairly dealt 
with by him, or are now honestly dealt with by me, you must be 
judges. 

He has been pleased to say, that this prosecution is brought against 
this letter signed " Marcus," merely as a part of what he calls a sys- 



398 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tem of attack upon the government, by the paper called " The Press." 
As to this, I will only ask you whether you are fairly dealt with? 
whether it is fair treatment to men upon their oaths, to insinuate to 
them, that the general character of a newspaper (and that general 
character founded merely upon the assertion of the jirosecutor), is to 
have any influence upon their minds, when they are to judge of a 
particular publication? I will only ask you, what men you must bo 
supposed to be, when it is thought, that even in a court of justice, 
and with the eyes of the nation upon you, you can be the dupes of 
that trite and exploded expedient, so scnndalous of late in this coun- 
try, of raising a vulgar and mercenary cry against whatever man, or 
whatever principle, it is thought necessary to put down ; and I shall, 
therefore, merely leave it to your own pride to suggest upon ^^hat 
foundation it could be hoped, that a senseless clamor of that kind 
could be echoed back by the yell of a jury upon their oaths. I trust 
you see that this has nothing to do with the question. 

Gentlemen of the jury, other matters have been mentioned which 
I must repeat for the same purpose ; that of showing you that they 
have nothing to do with the question. The learned counsel has been 
pleased to say, that he comes forward in this prosecution as the real 
advocate for the liberty of the press, and to protect a mild and a 
merciful government from its licentiousness; and he has been 
pleased to add, that the constitution ^caii never be lost while its free- 
dom remains, and that its licentiousness alone can destroy that free- 
dom. As to that, gentlemen, he might as well have said, tliat there 
is only one mortal disease of which a man can die : I can die the 
death inflicted by tyranny ; and when he comes forward to extin- 
guish this paper, in the ruin of the printer, by a state prosecution, 
in order to prevent it from dying of licentiousness, you must judge 
how candidly he is treating you, both in the foct and in the reason- 
ing. Is it in Ireland, gentlemen, that we are told licentiousness is 
the only disease that can be mortal to the press ? Has he heard of 
nothing else that has been fatal to the freedom of publication ? I 
know not whether the printer of the "Northern Star "may have heard 
of such things in his captivity ; but I know that his wife and chil- 
dren are well apprised that a press may be destroyed in the open 
day, not by its own licentiousness, but by the licentiousness of a 
military force. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 399 

As to the sincerity of the declaration, that the state has prosecuted, 
in order to assert the freedom of the press, it starts a train of 
thought — of melancholy retrospect and direful prospect — to which 
I did not think the learned counsel would have wished you to com- 
mit your minds. It leads you naturally to reflect at what times, 
from what motives, and with what conscquenc^cs, the government 
has displayed its patriotism, by prosecutions of this sort. As to the 
motives, does history give you a single instance in which the state 
has been provoked to these conflicts, except by the fear of truth and 
by the love of vengeance? Have you ever seen the rulers of any 
country bring forward a prosecution from motives of filial piety, for 
libels upon their departed ancestoi's ? Do you read that Elizabeth 
directed any of those state prosecutions against the libels which the 
divines of her times had written against her CathoUc sister, or 
against the other libels which the same gentlemen had written against 
her Protestant father? No, gentlemen, we read of no such thing; 
but we know she did bring forward a prosecution from motives of 
personal resentment ; and we know that a jury was found, time- 
serving and mean enough to give a verdict which she was ashamed 
to carry into effect. 

I said the learned counsel drew you back to the times that have 
been marked by these miseraljle conflicts. I see you turn your 
thmights to the reign of the second James. I see you turn your 
eyes to those pages of governmental abandonment, of popular deg- 
radation, of expiring liberty, of merciless and sanguinary persecu- 
tion : to that miserable period, in which the fallen and abject state 
of man might have been almost an argument in the mouth of the 
atheist and the blasphemer, against the existence of an all-just and 
all-wise First Cause ; if the glorious era of the Revolution that fol- 
lowed it had not refuted the impious infei'ence, by showing that if 
a man descends, it is not in his own proper motion ; that it is with 
labor and v/ith pain ; that he can continue to sink only until, by the 
force and pressure of the descent, the spring of his immortal faculties 
acquires that recuperative energy and effort that hurries him as 
many miles aloft ; that he sinks but to rise again. It is at that 
period that the state seeks for shelter in the destruction of the press ; 
it is in a period like that, that the tyrant prepares for an attack upon 
the people, by destroying the liberty of the press ; by taking away 



400 TREASURY OB^ ELOQUENCE. 

that sliield of wisdom and of virtue behind which the people are 
iuviilnei-ablc ; in whose pure and polished convex, ere the lifted blow 
has fallen, he beholds his own imajje, and is tui'ned into stone. It 
is at those periods that the honest man dares not speak, because 
truth is too dreadful to be told ; it is then humanity has no eai'S, 
because humanity has no tongue. It is then the proud man scorns 
to speak, but, like a physician baffled by the wayward excesses of a 
dying patient, retires indignantly from the bed of an unhappy 
wretch, whose ear is too fastidious to bear the sound of wholesome 
advice, whose palate is too debauched to bear the salutary bitter of 
the medicine that might redeem him ; and therefore leaves him to 
the felonious piety of the slaves that talk to him of life, and strip 
him before he is cold. 

I do not care, gentlemen, to exhaust too much of your attention, 
by following this subject through the last century with much minute- 
ness ; but the facts are too recent in your mind not to show you, 
that the liberty of the press and the liberty of the people sink and 
rise together ; that the liberty of speaking and the liberty of acting 
have shared exactly the same fate. You must have observed in 
England, that their fate has been the same in the successive vicissi- 
tudes of their late depression ; and sorry I am to add, that this 
country has exhibited a melancholy proof of their inseparable des- 
tiny, through the various and fitful stages of deterioration, down to 
the period of their final extinction, when the constitution has given 
place to the sword, and the only printer in Ireland who dares to 
speak for the people is now in the dock. 

Gentlemen, the learned counsel has made the real subject of this 
prosecution so small a ])art of his statement, and has led you into so 
wide a range — certainly as necessary to the object, as inapplicable 
to the subject of this prosecution — that I trust you will think me 
excusable in having somewhat followed his example. Glad am I to 
find that I have the authority of the same example far coming at last 
to the subject of this trial. I agree with the learned counsel that the 
charge made against the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is that of having 
grossly and inhumanly abused the royal prerogative of mercy, of 
which the King is only the trustee for the benefit of the people. 
The facts are not controverted. It has been asserted that their truth 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 401 

or falsehood is indifferent, and they arc shortly these, as they appear 
in this publication. 

William Orr was indicted for having administered the oath of a 
United Irishman. Every man now knows what the oath is : that it 
is simply an engagement, first, to promote a brotherhood of affec- 
tion among men of all religious distinctions ; secondly, to labor for 
the attainment of a parliamentary reform ; and thirdly, an obligation 
of secrecy, which was added to it when the convention law made it 
criminal and punishable to meet by any public delegation foi- that 
purpose. 

After remaining upwards of a year in gaol, Mr. Orr was brought 
to his trial ; was prosecuted by the state ; was sworn against l)y a 
common informer of the name of Whcatly, who himself had taken 
the obligation ; and was convicted under the Insurrection Act, 
which makes the administering such an obligation felony of death. 
The jury recommended Mr. Orr to mercy, and the judge, with a 
humanity becoming his character, transmitted the recommendation 
to the noble prosecutor in this case. Three of the jurors msKle 
solemn affidavit in court, that liquor had been conveyed into their 
box ; that they were brutally threatened by some of their fellow- 
jurors with criminal prosecution if they did not find the prisoner 
guilty ; and that under the impression of those threats, and worn 
down by watching and intoxication, they had given a verdict of 
guilty against him, though they believed him in their consciences to 
be innocent. That further inquiries were made, which ended in a 
discovery of the infamous life and character of the informer ; that a 
respite was therefore sent once, and twice, and thrice, to give time, 
as Mr. Attorney-General has stated, for his Excellency to consider 
whether mercy could be extended to him or not ; and that with a 
knowledge of all these circumstances, his Excellency did finally de- 
termine that mercy should not be extended to him ; and that he was 
accordingly executed upon that verdict. 

Of this publication, which the indictment charges to be fiilse and 
seditious, Mr. Attorney-General is pleased to say, that the design of 
it is to bring the courts of justice into contempt. As to this point 
■of fact, gentlemen, I beg to set you right. 

To the administration of justice, so far as it relates to the judges, 
this publication has not even an allusion in any part mentioned in 



402 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

this indictment; it relates to a department of justice, that cannot 
begin until the duty of the judge closes. Sorry should I be, that, 
with respect to this unfortunate man, any censure should be flung on 
those judges who presided at the trial, with the mildness and temper 
that became them upon so awful an occasion as the trial of life and 
death. Sure am I, that if they had been charged with inhumanity 
or injustice, and if they had condescended at all to prosecute the re- 
viler, they would not have come forward in the face of the public to 
say, as has been said this day, that it was immaterial whether the 
charge was true or not. Sure I am, their first object would have 
been to show that it was false, and readily should I have laeen an 
eye-witness of the fact, to have discharged the debt of ancient friend- 
shiji, of private respect, and of pul)lic dut}^ and upon my oath to 
have repelled the falsehood of such an imputation. 

Upon this subject, gentlemen, the presence of those venerable 
judges restrains what I might otherwise have said, nor should I have- 
named them at all, if I had not been forced to do so, and merely to 
imdeceive you, if you have been made to believe their characters to 
have any community of cause whatever with the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland. To him alone it is confined, and against him the charge is 
made, as strongly, I suppose, as the writer could find words to ex- 
press it, that the Viceroy of Ireland has cruelly abused the preroga- 
tive of royal mei'cj'', in suffering a man under such circumstances to 
perish like a common malefactor. For this Mr. Attorney-General 
calls for your conviction as a false and scandalous libel ; and after 
stating himself every fact that I have repeated to you, either from 
his statement, or from the evidence, he tells you, that you ought to 
find it false and scandalous, though he almost in words admits that 
it is not false, and has resisted the admission of the evidence by 
which we offered to prove every word of it to be true. 

And here, gentlemen, give me leave to remind you of the j^arties 
before j'ou. 

The travei'ser is a printer, who follows that profession for bread, 
and who at a time of great public misery and terror, when the people 
are restrained by law from debating under any delegated form ; when 
the few constituents that we have are prevented by force from meet- 
ing in their own persons, to deliberate or to petition ; when every 
other newspaper in Ireland is put down by force, or j^urchased by 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 403 

the administration (though here, gentlemen, perhaps I ought to beg 
your pardon for stating without authority ; I recollect when we at- 
tempted to examine as to the number of newspapers in the pay of 
the castle, that the evidence was objected to) ; at a season like this, 
Mr. Finnerty has had the courage, perhaps the folly, to print the 
publication in question, for no motive under heaven of malice or 
vengeance, but in the mere duty which he owes to his family, and to 
the public. 

His prosecutor is the King's minister in Ireland ; in that character 
does the learned gentleman mean to say, that his conduct is not a 
fair subject of public observation? Where does he find his authority 
for that in the law or practice of the sister country ? Have the vir- 
tues, or the exalted station, or the general love of his people )ire- 
served the sacred person even of the royal master of the prosecutor, 
from the asperity and intemperance of public censure, unfounded as- 
it ever must be, with any personal respect to his Majesty, in justice- 
or in truth? Have the gigantic abilities of Mr. Pitt, have the more 
gigantic talents of his great antagonist, Mr. Fox, protected either of 
them from the insolent familiarity, and for aught we know, the in- 
justice with which writers have treated them ? What latitude of 
invective has the King's minister escaped upon the subject of the 
present war?. Is there an epithet of contumel}', or of reproach, that 
hatred or that fancy could suggest, that is not publicly lavished upon 
them? Do you not find the words, advocate of despotism, robber 
of the puljlic treasure, murderer of the King's subjects, debaucher of 
the public morality, degrader of the constitution, tarnisher of the 
British empire, by frequency of use lose all meaning whatsoever, 
and dwindle into terms, not of any peculiar reproach, but of ordinary 
appellation ? 

And why, gentlemen, is this permitted in that country? I'll tell 
you Avhy ; because in that country they ai-e yet wise enough to see 
that the measures of the state are the proper subject for the freedom 
of the press ; that the principles relating to personal slander do not 
apply to rulers or to ministers ; that to publish an attack upon a 
public minister, without any regard to truth, but merely because of 
its tendency to a breach of the peace, would be ridiculous in the 
extreme. What breach of the peace, gentlemen, I pray you, in such 
a case? Is it the tendency of such publications to provoke Mr. 



404 t)F ELOQUENCE. 

Pitt or Mr. Duadas to break the head of the writer, if they should 
happen to meet him? No, gentlemen ; in that country this freedom 
is exercised, because the people feel it to be their right ; and it is 
wisely suffered to pass bj' the state, from a consciousness that it 
would be vain to oppose it ; a consciousness confirmed by the event 
of .every incautious experiment. It is suffered to pass from a con- 
viction that, in a court of justice at least, the bulwarks of the consti- 
tution will not be surrendered to the state ; and that the intended 
victim, whether clothed in the humble guise of honest industry, or 
decked in the honors of genius, and virtue, and philosophy, whether 
a Hardy or a Tookc, will find certain protection in the honesty and 
spirit of an English jury. ' 

But, gentlemen, I suppose Mr. Attorney-General will scarcely 
wish to carry his doctrine altogether so fiir. Indeed, I remember, 
he declared himself a most zealous advocate for the liberty of the 
press. I may, therefore, even according to him, presume to make 
some observations on tiie conduct of the existing government. I 
should wish to know how far he supposes it to extend ; is it to the 
composition of lampoons and madrigals, to be sung down the grates 
by ragged ballad-mongers to kitchen-maids and footmen? I will not 
suppose .that he means to confine it to the ebullitions of Billing.sgate, 
to those cataracts of ribaldry and scurrilitj', that are daily spouting 
upon the miseries of our wretched fellow-sufferers, and the unavail- 
ing efforts of those who have vainly labored in their cause. I will 
not suppose that ho confines it to the poetic license of a birthday 
ode ; the Laureat would not use such language ! In which case I 
do not entirely agree with him, that the truth or the falsehood is as 
perfectly immaterial to the law, as it is to the Laureat; as perfectly 
unrestrained by the law of the land, as it is by any law of decency 
or shame, of modesty or decorum. 

But as to the privilege of censure or blame, I am sorry that the 
learned gentleman has not favoi-ed you with his notion of the liberty 
of the press. 

Suppose an Irish Viceroy acts a very little absurdly, may thc» 
press venture to be respectfully comical upon that absurdity? Tho 
learned counsel does not, at least in terms, give a negative to that. 
But let me treat you honestly, and go further, to a more material 
point ; suppose an Irish Vicero}' does an act that brings scandal upon 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 4()5 

his muster, that fills the mind of a reasonable man with the fear of 
approaching despotism ; that leaves no hope to the people of pre- 
serving themselves and their children from chains, but in common 
confederacy for common safety. "What is that honest man in that 
case to do ? 

I am sorry the right honorable advocate for the liberty of the press 
has not teld yon his opinion, at least in any express words. I will 
therefore venture to give you my far himibler thoughts upon the 
subject. 

I think an honest man ought to tell the people frankly and boldly 
of their peril ; and I must say I can imagine no villainy greater than 
that of his holding a traitorous silence at such a crisis, except the 
villainy and baseness of prosecuting him, or of finding him guilty 
for such an honest discharge of his pul)lic duty. And I found myself 
on the known principle of the revolution of England, namely, that 
the crown itself may be abdicated by certain abuses of the trust 
reposed ; and that there are possible excesses of arbitrarj^ power, 
which it is not only the right, but the bounden duty, of every honest 
man to resist, at the risk of his fortune and his life. 

Now, gentlemen, if this reasoning be admitted, and it cannot be 
denied ; if there be any possible event in which the people are 
obliged to look only to themselves, and are justified in doing so ; 
can you be so absurd as to say, that it is lawful for the people to act 
upon it when it unfortunately does arrive, but that it is criminal iu 
any man to tell them that the miserable event has actually arrived, 
oris imminently approaching? Far am I, gentlemen, from insinu- 
ating that (extreme as it is) our misery has been matured into any 
deplorable crisis of this kind, from which I pray that the Almighty 
God may forever preserve us ! But I am putting my principles 
upon the strongest ground, and most favorable to my opponents, 
namely, that it never can be criminal to say anything of government 
but what is fiilse ; and I put this in the extreme, in order to demon- 
strate to you, a fortiori, that the privilege of speaking truth to the 
people, which holds in the last extremity, must also obtain in every 
stage of infei'ior importance ; and that, however a court may have 
decided, before the late act, that the truth was immaterial in case of 
libel, since that act, no honest jury can be governed by such prin- 
ciple. 



406 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Be pleased now, gentlemen, to consider the grounds upon which 
this publication is called a libel, and criminal. 

Mr. Attorney-General tells you it tends to excite sedition and in- 
surrection. Let me again remind you, that the truth of this charge 
is not denied by the noble prosecutor. What is it, then, that tends 
to excite sedition and insurrection ? " The act that is charged upon 
the prosecutor, and is not attempted to be denied? " And, gracious 
God ! gentlemen of the jury, is the public statement of tiie king's 
representative this, " I have done a deed that must fill the mind of 
every feeling or thinking man with horror and indignation; that 
must alienate every man that knows it from the king's government, 
and endanger the separation of this distracted empire : the traverser 
has had the guilt of publishing this fact, which I myself acknowledge, 
and I pray you to find him guilty ? " Is this the case which the Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland brings forward? Is this the principle for 
which he ventures, at a dreadful crisis like the present, to contend 
in a court of justice ? Is this the picture which he wishes to hold out 
of himself to the justice and humanity of his own countrj^men? Is 
this the history which he wishes to be read by the poor Irishmen of 
the South and of the North, by the sister nation, and the common 
enemy ? 

With the profoundest respect, permit me humbly to defend his 
Excellency, even against his own opinion. The guilt of this publi- 
cation he is pleased to think consists in this, that it tends to insur- 
rection. Upon what can such a fear be supported? After the 
multitudes that have perished in this unhappy nation within the last 
three years, unhappiness which has been borne with a patience not 
paralleled in the history of nations, can any man suppose that the 
fate of a single individual could lead to resistance or insurrection? 

But suppose that it might, what then ought to be tlae conduct of 
an honest man? Should it not be to apprize the government of the 
country and the Viceroy — you will drive the people to madness, if 
you persevere in such bloody councils ; you will alienate the Irish 
nation ; you will distract the common force ; and you will invite the 
common enemy? Should not an honest man say to the people, the 
measure of your afiliction is great, but you need not resort for 
remedy to any desperate expedients. If the King's minister is 
defective in humanity or wisdom, his royal master, your beloved 



JOHN P. CURUAN. 407 

sovereign, is abounding in both. At such a moment, can you be so 
senseless as not to feel that any one of you ought to hold such 
language ; or is it possible you could be so infatuated, as to punish 
the man who was honest enough to hold it ? — or is it possible that 
you could bring yourselves to say to your country, that at such a 
season the press ought to sleep upon its post, or to act like the 
perfidious watchman on his round, that sees the villain wrenching the 
door, or the flames bursting from the windows, while the inhabitant 
is wrapped in sleep, and cries out that " 'tis past past five o'clock, 
the morning is fair, and all well ! " 

" On this part of the case I shall put only one question to you. I 
do not aflect to say it is similar in all its points ; I do not affect to 
compare the humble foi'tunes of Mr. Orr with the sainted names of 
Kussell or Sidney ; still less am I willing to find any likeness between 
the pi'esent period and the year 1688. But I will put a question to 
you, completely parallel in pi-inciple : When that unhappy and 
misguided monarch had shed the sacred blood, which their noble 
hearts had matured into a fit cement of revolution, if any honest 
Englishman had been brought to trial for daring to proclaim to the 
world his abhorrence of such a deed, what would you have thought 
of the English jury that could have said, wo know in our hearts what 
he said was true and honest, but we will say, upon our oaths, that 
it was false and criminal ; and we will, by that base subserviency, 
add another item to the catalogue of public wrongs, and another 
argument for the necessity of an appeal to heaven for redress ? 

Gentlemen, I am perfectly aware that what I say may be easily 
misconstrued ; but if you listen to me, with the same feirness that I 
address you, I cannot be misunderstood. When I show you the full 
extent of your political rights and remedies ; when I answer those 
slanderers of British liberty, who degrade the monai'ch into a despot, 
who pervert the steadfastness of law into the waywardness of will ; 
when I show you the inestimable stores of political wealth, so deai'Iy 
acquired by our ancestors, and so solemnly bequeathed ; and when I 
show you how much of that precious inheritance has yet survived all 
the prodigality of their posterity, I am far from saying that I stand 
in need of it all upon the present occasion. No, gentlemen, far am 
I indeed from such a sentiment. No man more deeply than myself 
deplores the present melancholy state of our unhappy country. 



408 TREASUIIY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Neither does any nian more fervently wish for the return of peace 
and ti'anquillity, through the natural channels of mercy and of justice. 
I have seen too much of force and of A'iolence to hope much good 
from the continuance of theui on the one side or the retaliation of 
them on another. I liave of late seen too much of political rebuild- 
ing, not to have observed, that to demolish is not the shortest way 
to repai^. It is with pain and anguish that I should search for the 
miserable right of breaking ancient ties, or going in quest of new 
relations, or untried adventures. No, gentlemen, the case of my 
client rests not upon these sad privileges of despair. I trust, that 
as to the fact, namely, the intention of exciting insurrection, you 
must see it cannot be found in this publication ; that it is the mere 
idle, unsupported imputation of malice, or panic, or falsehood. And 
that as to the law, so far has he been from transgressing the limits of 
the constitution, that whole regions lie between him and those limits, 
which he has not trod, and which I pray to heaven it may never be 
necessaiy for an}'' of us to tread. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has been pleased to open another 
battery upon this publication, which I do trust I shall silence, unless 
I flatter mj^self too much iu supposing that hitherto mj' resistance 
has not been utterly unsuccessful. 

He abuses it for the foul and insolent familiarity of its address. I 
do clearly imderstand his idea ; he considers the freedom of the 
press to be the license of offering that paltry adulation which no man 
ought to stoop to utter or to hear ; he supposes the freedom of the 
press ought to be like the freedom of a king's jester, who, instead of 
reproving the faults of wliich majesty ought to be ashamed, is base 
and cunning enough, under the mask of servile and adulatory censure, 
to stroke down and pamper those vices of which it is foolish enough 
to be vain. He would not have the press presume to tell the Viccroj', 
that the prerogative of mercy is a trust for the benefit of the subject, 
and not a gaudy feather stuck into the diadem to shake in the wind, 
and by the waving of the gorgeous plumage to amuse the vanity of 
the wearer. He would not have it to say to him, that the discretion 
of the crown as to mercy, is like the discretion of a court of justice 
as to law ; and that iu the one case, as well as the other, wherever 
the propi'iety of the exercise of it appears, it is equally a matter of 
right. He would have the press all fierceness to the people, and all 



JOHN P. CURR.VN". 40^ 

sycophancy to power ; he would consider the mad and frenetic out- 
rages of authority, like the awful and inscrutable dispensations of 
Providence, and say to the unfeeling and despotic spoiler, in the 
blasphemed and insulted language of religious resignation, " the Lord 
hath given, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of 
the Lord." 

But let me condense the generality of the learned gentleman's in- 
vective into questions that you can conceive. Does he mean that the 
air of this publication is rustic and uncourtly? Does he mean, that 
when "Marcus" presumed to ascend the steps of the castle, and to 
address the Vicero}', he did not turn out his toes as he ought to have 
done? But, gentlemen, you are not a jury of daiicing-masters ; or 
does the learned gentleman mean that the language is coarse ||kI 
vulgar? If this be his complaint, my client has but a poor advo- 
cate. 

I do not pretend to be a mighty grammarian, or a formidable critic ; 
but I v.'oukl beg leave to suggest to you, in serious humility, that a 
free press can be supported only by the ardor of men who feel the 
prompting sting of real or supposed capacity ; who write from the 
enthusiasm of virtue, or the ambition of praise, and over whom, if 
you exercise the rigor of a grammatical censorship, you will inspire 
them with as mean an opinion of your integrity as of your wisdom, 
and inevitably drive them from their post ; and if you do, rel}' upon 
it, you Avill reduce the spirit of jiublication, and with it the press of 
this country, to what it for a long interval has been — the register of 
births, and fairs, and funerals, and the general abuse of the people 
and their friends. 

Gentlemen, in order to bring this charge of insolence and vulgarity 
to the test, let me ask you, whether you know of any language which 
could have adequately described the idea of mercy denied, where it 
ought to have been granted ; or of any phrase vigorous enough to 
convey the indignation which an honest man would have felt upon 
such a subject ? 

Let me bog of you for a moment to suppose that any one of you 
had been the writer of this very severe expostulation with the Vice- 
roy, and that you had been the witness of the whole progress of this 
never-to-be-forgotten catastrophe. 

Let me supjiose that you had known the charge upon which Mr. 



410 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Orr was apprehended — the charge of abjuring that bigotry which 
tad torn and disgraced his country — of pledging himself to restore 
the people of his country to their place in the constitution — and of 
binding himself never to be the betrayer of his fellow-laborers in that 
enterprise ; that you had seen him upon that charge removed from 
his industry, and confined in a gaol ; that through the slow and lin- 
gering progress of twelve tedious months you had seen him confined 
in a dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his own 
limbs ; that day after day you had marked the unhappy captive 
cheered by no sound but the cries of his family, or the clinking 
of chains ; that you had seen him at last brought to his trial ; that 
you had seen the vile and perjured informer dej^osing against his life ; 
th^you had seen the drunken, and worn-out, and ten-ified jury give 
in a verdict of death ; that you had seen the same jury when their 
returning sobriety had brought back their conscience, prostrate them- 
selves before the humanity of the bench, and pray that the mercy of 
the crown might save their characters fi'om the reproach of an invol- 
untary crime, their consciences from the torture of etenial self-con- 
demnation, and their souls from the indelible stain of innocent blood. 
Let me suppose that you had seen the respite given, and that con- 
trite and honest reconunendation transmitted to that scat ^v'here mercy 
was presumed to dwell— that new and before unheard-of crimes are 
discovered against tlie informer — that the royal mercy seems to re- 
lent, and that a new respite is sent to the prisoner — that time is 
taken, as the learned counsel for the crown has expressed it, to see 
whether mercy could be extended or not ! — that after that period of 
lingering deliberation passed, a third respite is transmitted — that 
the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being restored 
to a family that he had adoi-ed, to a character that he had never 
stained, and to a country that he had ever loved — that you had seen 
his wife and children upon their knees, giving those tears to grati- 
tude, which their locked and frozen hearts could not give to anguish 
and despair, and imploring the blessings of Eternal Providence upon 
Lis head, who had gi-aciously spared the father, and restored him to 
his children — that you had seen the olive branch sent into his little 
ark, but no sign that the waters had subsided. 

"Alas! 
Kor wife, nor children more shall he behold — 
Nor friends, nor sacred home ! " 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 411 

No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to h'ght 
and life ; but the minister of death hurries him to the scene of suf- 
fering and of shame, where, unmoved by the hostile array of artillery 
and armed men collected together, to secure, or to insult, or to 
disturb him, he dies with a solenm declaration of his innocence, and 
utters his last breath, in a prayer for the liljerty of his country. 

Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public ear 
upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language would you 
have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation? Would you 
have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint? wovild you 
have checked your feelings to search for courtly and gaudy language ? 
would you have been meap enough — but I entreat your forgiveness 
— I do not think meanly of you. Had I thought so meanly of you 
I could not suffer my mind to commune Avith you as it has done ; 
had I thought you that base and vile instrument, attuned by hope 
and by fear into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no 
groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honor could 
speak, let me honestly tell you, I should have scorned to fling my 
hand across it — I should have left it to a fitter minstrel. If I do 
not, therefore, grossly err in my opinion of you, I could use no 
language upon such a subject as this, that must- not lag behind the 
rapidity of your feelings, and that would not disgrace those feelings, 
if it attempted to describe them. 

Gentlemen, I am not unconscious that the learned counsel for the 
crown seemed to address you with a confidence of a very different 
kind ; he seemed to expect from you a kind and respectful sympathy 
■with the feelings of the Castle, and with the griefs of chided authority. 
Perhaps, gentlemen, he may know you better than I do. If he does, 
he has spoken to you as he ought ; he has been i-ight in telling you 
that if the reprobation of this writer is weak, it is because his genius 
could not make it stronger; he has been right in telling you, that 
his language has not been braided and festooned as elegantly as it 
might — that he has not pinched the miserable plaits of his phrase- 
ology, nor placed his patches and feathers with that correctness of 
millinery which became so exalted a person. 

If you agree with him, gentlemen of the jury — if you think that 
the man who ventures, at the hazard of his own life, to rescue from 
the deep the drowning honor of his country, 3'ou must not presume 



412 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

upon the guilty familiarity of plucking it uj:) by the locks. I have 
no more to say ; do a courteous thing. Upright and honest jurors, 
find a civil and obliging verdict against the printer ! And when 
you have done so, march through the ranks of your fellow-citizens 
to 3'ovir own homes, and bear their looks as j'ou pass along. Retire 
to the bosom of your families and your children, and when you are 
13i"esiding over the morality of the parental board, tell those infants, 
who are to be the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. 
Form their young minds by your precepts, and confirm tliose pre- 
cepts by your own example — teach them how discreetly allegiance 
may be peijured on the table, or loyalty be foi'sworn in the jury- 
box ; and when you have done so, tell them the story of Orr — tell 
them of his captivity, of his children, of his crime, of his hopes, of 
his disappointments, of his courage, and of his death; and when 
you find your little hearers hanging from your lips — when you see 
their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow — and their 3'oung 
hearts bursting Avith the pangs of anticipated orphanage — tell them 
that you had the boldness and the justice to stigmatize the monster 
who had dared to publish the transaction ! 

Gentlemen, I believe I told you befoi-e, that the conduct of the 
Viceroy was a small part, indeed, of the subject of this trial. If 
the vindication of his mere personal character had been, as it ought 
to have been, the sole object of this prosecution, I should have felt 
the most respectful regret at seeing a person of his high considera- 
tion come forward in a court of pnljlic justice in one and the same 
breath to admit the truth, and to demand the punishment of a pub- 
lication like the present, to prevent the chance he might have had of 
such an accusation being disbelieved, and, by a prosecution like this,, 
to give to the passing stricture of a newspaper that life and body, 
and action and reality, to prove it to all mankind, and make the- 
record of it indelible. Even as it is, I do own I feel the utmost 
concern that his name should have been soiled by being mixed in a 
question of which it is the mere pretext and scapegoat. 

Mr. Attorney-General was too wise to state to you the real ques- 
tion, or the object which he wished to be answered b}' j'our verdict. 
Do you remember that he was pleased to say that this publication 
was a base and foul misrepresentation of the virtue and wisdom of 
the government, and a false and audacious statement to the world, 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 413 

that the King's government in Ireland was base enough to pay in- 
formers for taking away the lives of the people? When I heard this 
statement to-day, I doubted whether you were aware of its tendency 
or not. It is now necessary that I should explain it to you more at 
large. 

You cannot l)e ignorant of the great conflict between prerogative 
and privilege which hath convulsed the country for the last fifteen 
years ; when I say privilege, j'ou cannot suppose that I mean the 
privilege of the House of Commons, — I mean the privileges of the 
people. 

You are no strangers to the various modes by which the people 
labored to approach their object. Delegations, conventions, re- 
monstrances, resolutions, petitions to the parliament, petitions to 
the throne. 

It might not be decorous in this i)Iace to state to you, with any 
sharpness, the various modes of resistance that were employed on 
the other side ; but you, all of you, seem old enough to remember 
the variety of acts of parliament that have been made, by which the 
people were deprived, session after session, of what they had sup- 
posed to be tlie known and established fundamentals of the consti- 
tution, the right of public debate, the right of public petition, the 
right of bail, the right of trial, the right of arms for self-defence ; 
until the last, even the relics of popular privilege became superseded 
by a military force ; the press extinguished ; and the state found its 
last entrenchment in the grave of the constitution. As little can you 
be strangers to the tremendous confederations of hundreds of thou- 
sands of your countrj'raen, of the nature and objects of which such 
a variety of opinions have been propagated and entertained. 

The writer of this letter presumed to censure the recall of Lord 
Fitzwilliam, as well as the measures of the present Viceroy. Into 
this subject I do not enter ; but you cannot yourselves forget that 
the conciliatory measures of the former noble lord had produced an 
almost miraculous unanimity in this country ; and much do I regret, 
and sui-e I am that it is not without pain j'ou can reflect, how unfor- 
tunately the conduct of his successor has terminated. His intentions 
might have been the best ; I neither know them nor condemn them, 
but their terrilde effects j'ou cannot be blind to. Every new act of 
coercion has been followed by some new symptom of discontent, 



414 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and ev,eiy new attack provoked some new paroxysm of r- sentment, 
or some new combination of resistance. 

In this deplorable state of affairs — convulsed and distracted 
within, and menaced by a most formidable enemy from without — 
it was thought that public safety might be found in union and con- 
ciliation ; and repeated applications were made to the parliament of 
this kingdom, for a calm enquiry into the complaints of the people. 
These applications were made in vain. 

Impressed by the same motives, Jlr. Fox brought the same sub- 
ject l)efore the Commons of England, and ventured to ascribe the 
jierilous state of Ireland to the severity of its government. Even 
his stupendous al)ilities, excited by the liveliest sympathy with our 
sufferings, and animated by the most ardent zeal to restore the 
strength with the union of the empire, were repeatedly exerted 
without success. The fact of discontent was denied — the fact of 
coercion was denied — and the consequence was, the coercion be- 
came more implacable, and the discontent more threatening and 
irrecoucilable. 

A similar application was made in the beginning of this session in 
the Lords of Great Britain, by our illustrious countryman,* of whom 
I do not wonder that my learned friend should have obsei'ved, how 
much virtue can fling pedigree into the shade ; or how much the 
transient honor of a body inherited from man, is obscured by the 
lustre of an intellect derived from God. He, after being an eye- 
witness of this country, presented the miserable picture of what he 
had seen; and, to the astonishment of ever}^ man in Ireland, the 
existence of those facts was ventured to be denied ; the conduct of 
the Viceroy was justified and applauded; and the necessity of con- 
tinuing that conduct was insisted upon as the only means of preserv- 
ing the constitution, the peace and the prosperity of Ii'eland. The 
moment the learned counsel had talked of this publication as a false 
statement of the conduct of the government, and the condition of the 
people, no man could be at loss to see that the awful question, which 
had been dismissed from the Commons of Ireland, and from the 
Lords and Commons of Great Britain, is now brought forward to 
be tried by a side wind, and, in a coUateral way, liy a criminal 
prosecution. 

* Lord Moira. 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 4i5 

The learned counsel has asserted that the paper which he prose- 
cutes is only part of a system formed to misrepresent the state of 
Ireland and the conduct of its government. Do you not, therefore, 
discover that his object is to procure a verdict to sanction the Par- 
liaments of both countries in refusing an enquiry into your griev- 
ances? Let me ask yuu, then, are you prepared to say, upon your 
oath, that those measures of coercion, which are daily practised, are 
absolutely necessary and ought to be continued? It is not upon 
Finnerty you are sitting in judgment ; but you are sitting in judg- 
ment upon the lives and liberties of the inhabitants of more than 
half of Ireland. You are to say that it is a foul proceeding to con- 
demn the government of Ireland ; that it is a foul act, founded in 
foul motives, and originating in falsehood and sedition ; that it is an 
attack upon a government under which the people are prosperous and 
happy ; that justice is administered with mercy ; that the statements 
made in Great Britain are false — are the effusions of party or of dis- 
content ; that all is mildness and tranquillity ; that there are no burn- 
ings — no transportations ; that you never travel by the light of 
conflagrations ; that the gaols are not crowded month after month, 
from which prisoners are taken out, not f )r trial, but for embark- 
ation ! These are the questions upon which, I say, you must virtually 
decide. It is in vain that the counsel for the crown may tell you 
that I am misrepresenting the case — that I am endeavoring to raise 
false fears, and to take advantage of your passions — that the question 
is, whether this paper be a libel or not — and that the circumstances 
of the country have nothing to do with it. Such assertions must be 
vain. The statement of the counsel for the crown has forced the 
introduction of those important topics ; and I appeal to your own 
hearts whether the country is misrepresented, and whether the gov- 
ernment is misrepresented. 

I tell you, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, it is not with respect 
to Mr. Orr, or Mr. Finnerty, that your verdict is now sought. You 
are called upon, on your oaths, to say, that the government is wise 
and merciful — the people prosiDcrous and happy ; that military law 
ought to be continued ; that the constitution could not with safety be 
restored to Ireland ; and that the statements of a contrary import by 
your advocates, in either country, are libellous and false. 

I tell you these are the questions ; and I ask you, if you can have 



41G TREASURY OF EI-OQUENCE. 

the front to give tlie expected answer in the face of a community Avho 
know the country as well as you do? Let me ask you, how you 
could reconcile with such a verdict, the gaols, the tenders, the gib- 
bets, the conflagrations, the murders, the pi'oclamations that wc hear 
of every day in the streets, and sec every day in the country? What 
are the prosecutions of the learned counsel himself, circuit after cir- 
cuit? Merciful God! what is the state of Ireland, and where shall 
you find the wretched inhabitant of this land? You may find him, 
perhaps, in a gaol, the only place of security — I had almost said of 
ordinary habitation ! If j-ou do not find him there, you may sec him 
flying with liis family from the flames of his own dwelling — lighted 
to his dungeon by the conflagration of his hovel ; or you may find his 
bones bleaching on the green fields of his countrj' ; or you may .find 
him tossing on the surface of the ocean, and mingling his groans 
with those tempests, loss savage than his persecutors, tliat drift him 
to areturnless distance from his family and his home, without charge, 
or trial, or sentence. Is this a foul misrepresentation? Or can you, 
with these facts ringing in your ears, and staring in your face, say, 
upon your oaths, they do not exist? You are called upon, in defi- 
ance of shame, of truth, of honor, to deny the sufi'erings under 
which you groan, and to flatter the persecution that tramples you 
under foot. 

Gentlemen, I am not accustomed to speak of circumstances of this 
kind ; and though familiarized as I have been to them, when I como 
to speak of them, my power fails me — my voice dies within me. I 
am not able to call upon you. It is now I ought to have strength — 
it is now I ought to have enei'gy and voice. But I have none ; I am 
like the unfortunate state of the country — perhaps like you. This 
is the time in which I ought to speak, if I can, or be dumb forever ; 
in which, if you do not speak as you ought, you ought to be dumb 
forever. 

But the learned gentleman is further pleased to say, that the tra- 
verser has charged the government with the encouragement of 
informers. This, gentlemen, is another small fact that you are to 
deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the solemnity of your 
oaths. You are upon your oaths to say to the sister country, that 
the government of Ireland uses no such abominable instruments of 
destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, what do you 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 417 

feci, when in my hearing, when in the face of this andiencc, you are 
called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and every man of 
you know, by the testimony of your own e3'es, to be utterly and 
absolutely false ? I speak not now of the public proclamation for 
informers, with a promise of secrecy, and of extravagant reward ; I 
speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often 
transferred from the table to the dock, and from the docic to the 
pillory; I speak of what your own eyes have seen, day after day, 
during the course of this commission, from the box where you are 
now sitting; the number of horrid miscreants, who acknowledged, 
upon their oaths, th;it they had come from the seat of government — 
from the very chambers of the Castle — where they had been worlvcd 
upon, by the fear of death and the hope of compensation, to give evi- 
dence against their fellows ; that the mild, tlac wholesome and merciful 
councils of this government are holden over these catacombs of liv- 
ing death, where the wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart 
has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness ! 

Is this a picture created by a hag-ridden fancy, or is it a fact? 
Have you not seen him, after his resurrection from that region of 
death and corruption, make his appearance upon the tal)le, the liv- 
ing image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? 
Have you not marked when he entered how the stormy wave of the 
multitude retired at his approach? Have you not seen how the 
human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undis- 
scmljlcd homage of deferential horror? how his glance, like the 
lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and 
mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of 
woe and death — a death which no innocence c;ui escape, no art 
elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. Tiiere was an antidote — 
a. juror's oath 1 — but even that adamantine chain, tiiat bound the 
integrity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and molten 
in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth ; conscience 
swings trom her moorings, and the appalled and affrighted juror 
consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim : — 

" Et qUBC sibi quisque timebat, 
Unius ill miscri csitium couversa tiilere." 

Informers are worshipped in the temple of justice, even as the devil 



418 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

has been worshipped by Pagans and savages — even so in this wick- 
ed country is the informer an object of judicial idolatry — even so 
is he soothed by the music of human groans — even so is he placated 
and incensed by the fumes and by the blood of human sacrifices. 

Gentlemen, I feel I must have tired your patience ; lant I have 
been forced into this length by the prosecutor, who has thought fit 
to introduce those extraordinary topics, and to bring a question of 
mere politics to trial, under the form of a criminal prosecution. I 
cannot say I am surprised that this has been done, or that you 
should be solicited by the same inducements, and from the same 
motives, as if your verdict was a vote of approbation. I do not 
wonder that the government of Ireland should stand appalled at the 
state to whicli we are reduced. I wonder not that they should start 
at the public voice, and labor to stifle or contradict it. I wonder 
not that at this arduous crisis, Avhen the very existence of the empire 
is at stake, and when its strongest and most precious limb is not 
girt with the sword for battle, but pressed by the tourniquet for 
amputation ; when tliey find the coldness of death already begun in 
those extremities where it never ends ; that they are terrified at what 
they have done, and wish to say to the surviving parties of that 
empire, "they cannot say that we did it." I wonder not that they 
should consider their conduct as no immaterial question for a court 
of criminal jurisdiction, and wish anxiously, as on an inquest of 
blood, for the kind acquittal of a friendly jury. 

I wonder not that the}' should wish to close the chasm they have 
opened, by flinging j-ou into the abyss. But trust me, my country- 
men, you might perish in it, but you could not close it; trust me, if 
it is yet possible to close it, it can be done only by truth and honor; 
trust me, that such an effect could no more be wrought by the sacri- 
fice of a jury, than by the sacrifice of Orr. 

As a state measure, the one would be as unwise and unavailing as 
the other ; but while you are yet upon the brink, while you are yet 
visible, let me, before we part, remind you once more of your awful 
situation. 

You are upon a great forward ground, with the people at your 
back, and the government in your front. You have neither the dis- 
advantages nor the excuses of jurors a century ago. No, thank 
God ! never was there a stronoer characteristic distinction between 



JOHN P. CURRAN. 419 

those times, upon ■wbich no man can reflect without horror, and tho 
present. You have seen this trial conducted with mildness and 
joatience by the court. We have now no Jefferies, with scurvy and 
vulgar conceits, to browbeat the prisoner and perplex his counsel. 
Such has been the improvement of manners, and so calm the confi- 
dence of integrity, that during the defence of accused persons, the 
judges sit quietly, and show themselves worthy of their situation by 
bearing, with a mild and merciful patience, the little extravagancies 
of the bar, as you should bear with the little extravagancies of the 
press. Let me then turn your eyes to that pattern of mildness in 
the bench. The press is your advocate ; bear with its excess — bear 
with everything but its bad intention. If it come as a villanous 
slanderer, treat it as such ; but if it endeavor to raise the honor and- 
glory of your country, remember that you reduce its power to a 
nonentity, if you stop its animadversions upon public measures. 
You should not check the efibrts of genius, nor damp the ardor of 
patriotism. In vain will you desire the bird to soar, if you meanly 
or madly steal from it its plumage. Beware lest, under the pretence 
of bearing down the licentiousness of the press, you extinguish it 
altogether. Beware how you rival the venal ferocity of those mis- 
creants, who rob a printer of the means of bread, and claim from 
deluded royalty the reward of integrity and allegiance. Let me, 
therefore, remind you, that though the day may soon come when our 
ashes shall be scattered before the winds of heaven, the memory of 
what you do cannot die ; it will carry down to your posterity your 
honor or your shame. In the presence and in the name of that ever 
living God, I do therefore conjure you to reflect, that you have your 
characters, your consciences, that you have also the character, per- 
haps the ultimate destiny of your country, in your hands. In that 
awful name, I do conjure you to have mercy upon your country and 
yourselves, and so judge now, as you will hereafter be judged ; and 
I do now submit the fate of my client, and of that country which we 
have yet in common, to your disposal. 

The Prime Sergeant (Hon. James Fitzgerald) shortly replied; Judge Downes 
charged wealdy, but not rudely; and, after a short absence, the jury returned 
" Guilty" on tlic issue paper. 

On the following day, the 23rd of December, Mr. Finnerty was brought up for 
judgment. Mr. Finnerty stated that he had been taken out of prison to Alderman 



420 



TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Alexander's office, aiul there threatened with public whippiug, if ho did not frivo up 
the aullior of the libel. He boldly defended the letter, but w.is most respeci.I'iU to 
the Bench. Judge Downes sentenced him to two }-ear»' imprisonment IVom the day 
of his arrest, to stand in the pillory for an hour, pay .a fine of £20, and at ilu' expi- 
ration of his imprisonment to give security, himself in £.")00, and two bailsmen i;i 
£2uO each for his good behavior. On the 30th of December, Jlr. Finnerly did actu- 
ally stand in the pillory, and the rest of this miscellaneous and iniciuilous seuienco 
was also carried out. 




SPEECHES 



Richard Lalor Sheil. 



[4211 




lUCHARD LALOK SIIIEL. 



Clare Election. 

Speech made at the Clare Election — Preceded bt an 
Account of that Event, ^vritten bt Mr. Sheil, in Sep- 
tember, 1828. 



iKipnE Catholics had passed a resolution to oppose the election of 
^^ every candidate who should not pledge himself against the 
^ Dulic of Wellington's administration. This measure lay for 
if some time a dead letter in the registry of the Association, and 
was gradually passing into oblivion, when an incident occurred which 
gave it an importance far greater than had originally belonged to it. 
Lord John Kussell, flushed with the victory which had been achieved 
in the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and grateful to the 
Duke of AVcliington for tiic part which he had taken, wrote a letter 
to Mr. O'Connell, in which ho suggested that the conduct of his 
Grace had lieen so fair and manly towards the Dissenters, as to enti- 
tle liini to tbcir gratitude ; and that they would consider the reversal 
of the resolution wiiich had been passed against his government, as 
evidence of the interest which was felt in Ireland, not only in the 
great question peculiaily applicable to that country, but in the asser- 
tion of religious freedom tiu'ough the empire. Tiie authoritj' of 
Lord John llussell is considerable, and Mr. O'Connell, under the 
influence of his advice, proposed that the anti-Wellington resolution 
should be withdrawn. This motion was violently opposed, and Mr. 
O'Connell perceived that the antipathy to the Great Captain was 
more deeply rooted than he had originally imagined. After a long 
and tempestuous debate, he suggested an amendment, in which the 
principle of his original motion was given up, and the Catholics 
remained pledged to their hostility to the Duke of Wellington's 

(423) 



421 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

iidniinistriilioii. Mr. 0'( omicU has reason to rejoice at his failure 
in eurr3'ing this proposition ; for if he had succeeded, no ground for 
opposing the return of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald would have existed. 

Tlie promotion of that gontlcnuui to a seat iu the cabinet created a 
A'acmcy in the representation of the county of Clare; and an oppor- 
tunity was aflbrded the lioman Catholic body of proving that the 
resohitiou which had been passed against the Duke of Wellington's 
government was not an idle vaunt, but that it could be carried in a 
striking instance into elfect. It \v'as determined that all the power 
ol the people should be put forth. The Association looked round 
ibr a candidate, and without having previously consulted him, 
selected Major M'Namara. He is a Protestant in religion, a Catho- 
lic in politics, and a Milesian in descent. He was called upon to 
stand. Some days elapsed and no .-mswcr was returned by him. 
The [)ublic mind was tiirown into suspense, and various conjectures 
went abroad as to the cause of this singular omission. Some alleged 
that he was gone to an island off the coast of Clare, Mhere tlic pro- 
ceedings of the Association had not reached him ; while others sug- 
gested that he was only waiting until the clergy of the county should 
deckire themselves more unequivocally favorable to him. 1 he latter, 
it ^vas said, had evinced mucli apathy, and it was rumored that Dean 
O'Shaughnessy, who is a distant relative of Mr. Fitzgerald, had inti- 
mated a determination not to support any anti-ministerial candidate. 
The major's silence, and the doubts which were entertained Avith 
regard to the allegiance of the priests, created a sort of panic at the 
Association. A meeting was called, and various opinions Avero 
delivered as to the propriety of engaging in a contest, the issue of 
which was considered exceedingly doubtful, and in which, failure 
would be attended wiih such disasti-ous consequences. jNlr. O'Cou- 
nell himself did not appear exceedingly sanguine : and Mr. Purcell 
O'Gorman, a native of Clare, and who had a niiuuto knowledge of 
the feelings of the people, expressed apprehensions. There were, 
however, two gentlemen (O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele), who 
strongly insisted that the people might l)c roused, and that the 
priests were not as lukewarm as was imagined. Upon the zeal of 
Dean O'Shaughnessy, however, a good deal of question was thrown. 
By a singular coincidence, just as his name was uttered, a gentleman 
entered, who, but for the peculiar locality, might have been readily 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 425 

mistaken for a clergyman of the Established Church. Between the 
priesthood of the two religions there are, in aspect and demeanor, as 
well as in creed and discipline, several points of affinity, and the 
abstract sacerdotal character is readily perceptible in both. The 
parson, however, in his attitude and attire, presents the evidences of 
superiority, and carries the mannerism of ascendancy upon him. A 
broad-brimmed hat, comjDosed of the smoothest and blackest mate- 
rial, and drawn by two silken threads into a fire-shovel configura- 
tion, a felicitous adaptation of his jerkin to the symmetries of his 
chest and shoulder, stockings of glossy silk, which displayed the 
happy proportions of a swelling leg, a ruddy cheek, and a bi-ight, 
authoritative eye, suggested, at first view, that the gentleman who 
had entered the room while the merits of Dean O'Shaughnessy were 
under discussion, must be a minister of the prosperous Christianity 
of the Established Church. It was, however, no other than Dean 
O'Shauglinessy himself. He was received with a burst of applause, 
which indicated that, whatever surmises with respect to his fidelity 
had previously gone out, his appearance befoi'e that tribunal was 
considered by the assembly as a proof of his devotion to the public 
Interest. The dean, however, made a very scholastic sort of ora- 
tion, the gist of which it was I)y no' means easy to arrive ct. He 
denied that he had enlisted himself under Mr. Fitzgerald's banners, 
but at the same time studiously avoided giving any sort of pledge. 
He did not state distinctly what his opinion was with respect to the 
co-operation of the priests with the Association ; and when he was 
pressed, begged to be allowed to withhold his sentiments on the 
subject. The Association were not, however, dismayed ; and it hav- 
ing been conjectured that the chief reason for Major M'Namara hav- 
ing omitted to return an answer was connected with pecuniary con- 
siderations, it was decided that so large sum as £5,000 of the 
Catholic rent should be allocated to the expenses of his election. 
O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele were directed to proceed at once 
to Clare, in order that they might have a personal interview with 
bim, and they innnediately set off. After an absence of two clays, 
O'Gorman Mahon returned, having left his colleague behind in order 
to arouse the people ; and he at length conveyed certain intelligence 
with respect to the Major's determination. The obligations under 
which his family lay to Mr. Fitzgerald were such, that he was bound 



426 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

in honor not to oppose him. This information pi'oclaccd a feeling of 
deep disappointment among the Catholic body, while the Protestant 
party exulted in his apparent desertion of the cause, and boasted 
that no gentleman of the county would stoop so low as to accept of 
the patronage of the Association. In this emergency, and when it 
was universally regarded as an utterly hopeless attempt to oppose 
the cabinet minister, the public were astonished by an address from 
Mr. O'Connell to the freeholders of Clare, in which he offered him- 
self as a candidate, and solicited their support. 

Nothing but his subsequent success could exceed the sensation 
which was produced by this address, and all eyes were turned 
towards the field in which so remarkable a contest was to be waged. 
The two candidates entered the lists with signal advantages upon 
both sides. Mr. O'Connell had an unparalleled popularity, which 
the services of thirty years had secured to him. Upon the other 
hand, Mr. Vcsey Fitzgerald presented a combination of favorable 
circumstances, which rendered the issue exceedingly difficult to cal- 
culate. His father had held the office of prime sergeant at the Irish 
bar; and, although indebted to the government for his promotion, 
had the virtuous intrepidit}' to vote against the Union. This example 
of independence had rendered him a great favorite with the people. 
From the moment that his son had obtained access to power, he had 
employed his extensive influence in doing acts of kindness to the 
gentry of the county of Clare. He had inundated it with the over- 
flowings of ministerial bounty. The oldest sons of the poorer gentle- 
men, and the younger branches of the aristocracy, had been provided 
for through his means ; and in the arny, the navy, the treasury, the 
Four Courts, and the Custom House, the proofs of his political 
friendship were everywhere to be found. Independently of any act 
of his which could lie referred to his personal interest, and his anxiety 
to keep up his influence in the county, Mr. Fitzgerald, who is a man 
of very amiable disposition, had conferred many services upon his 
Clare constituents. Nor was it to Protestants that these manifesta- 
tions of favor were confined. He had laid not only the Catholic 
proprietors, but the Catholic priesthood, luider obligation. The 
bishop of the diocese himself (a respectable old genlleman Mho 
drives about in a gig with a mitre upon it) is supposed not to have 
escaped from his bounties ; and it is more than insinuated that some 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 427 

droppings of ministerial manna had fallen upon him. Tiie conse- 
quence of this systematized and uniform plan of benefaction is 
obvious. The sense of favor was heightened by the manners of this 
extensive distributor of the favoi's of the crown, and converted the 
ordinary feeling of thankfulness into one of personal regard. To 
this array of very favorable circumstances, Mr. Fitzgerald brought 
the additional influence arising from his recent promotion to the 
cabinet; which, to those wiio had former benefits to return, aflordcd 
an opportunity for the exercise of that kind of prospective gratitude 
which has been described to consist of a lively sense of services to 
come. These were the comparative advantages with which the 
ministerial and the popular candidate engaged in this celebrated 
contest ; and Ireland stood hy to witness the encounter. 

Mr. O'Connell did not immediately set off from Dublin, but before 
his departure several gentlemen were despatched from the Associa- 
tion in order to excite the minds of the people, and to prepare the 
way for him. The most active and useful of the persons who were 
employed upon this occasion, were the two gentlemen to whom I 
have already referred, Mr. Steele and O'Gorman Mahon. They are 
both deserving of special conmiendation. The former is a Protestant 
of a respectable fortune in the county of Clare, and who has all his 
life been devoted to the assertion of liberal principles. Jn Trinity 
College he was amongst the foremc^st of the advocates of emancipa- 
tion, and at that early period became the intimate associate of many 
Eoman Catholic gentlemen who have since distinguished themselves 
in the proceedings of their body. Being a man of independent cir- 
cumstances, Mr. Steele did not devote himself to any profession, 
and having a zealous and active mind, looked round for occupation. 
The Spanish war afforded him a field for the display of that generous 
enthusiasm by which he is distinguished. He joined the patriot 
army, and fought with desperate valor upon the batteries of the 
Trocadcro. It was only when Cadiz had surrendered, and the cause 
of Spain became utterly hopeless, that Mr. Steele relinquished this 
noble undertaking. He returned to England, surroumled by exiles 
from the unfortunate country, for the liberation of which he had 
repeatedly exposed his life. It was impossible for a man of so 
much energy of character to remain in torpor; and on his arrival in 
Ireland, faithful to the principles by which he had been uniformly 



428 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

swayed, ho joined the Catholic Association. There he delivered 
several enthusiastic declamations in favor of religious liberty. Such 
a man, however, was fitted for action as well as for harangue ; and 
the moment the contest in Clare began, he threw himself into the 
combat with the sam.e alacrity with which ho had rushed upon the 
French bayonets at Cadiz. He was serviceable in. various ways. 
He opened the political campaign by intimating his readiness to, 
fight any landlord who should conceive himself to be aggrieved by 
an interference with his tenants. This was a very impressive exor- 
dium. He then proceeded to canvass for votes ; and, assisted by 
his intimate friend, O'Gorman ]\Iahon, travelled through the countr^^, 
and, both by day and night, addressed the people from the altars 
round which they were assembled to hear him. It is no exaggera- 
tion to say, that to him, and to his intrepid and indefatigable con- 
federate, the success of Mr. O'Connell is greatly to be ascribed. 
O'Gorman Mahon is introduced into this article as one amongst 
many figures. He would deserve to stand apart in a poi'trait. 
Nature has been peculiarly favorable to him. He has a very striking 
physiognomy, of the Corsair character, which the Protestant Gul- 
nares, and the Catholic Medoras, find it equally ditficult to resist. 
His figure is tall, and he is peculiarly free and der/age in all his atti- 
tudes and movements. In any other his attire would appear singu- 
larly fantastical. Ilis manners are exceedingly frank and natural, 
and have a character of kindliness as well as of self-reliance imprinted 
upon them. He is wholly free from embarrassment, and carries a 
well-founded consciousness of his personal merit; which is, however, 
so well united with urbanity, that it is not in the slightest degree 
offensive. His talents as a popular speaker are considerable. He 
derives from external qualifications an influence over the multitude, 
which men of diminutive stature are somewhat slow in obtaining, A 
small man is at first view regarded I)y the great body of spectators 
with disrelish; and it is only by force of phrase, and by the charm 
of speech, that he can at length succeed in inducing his auditors to 
overlook any infelicity f)f configuration ; but when O'Gorman jMa!h)ii 
throws himself out before the people, and, touching his wiiiskers 
with one hand, brandishes the other, an enthusiasm is at once pro- 
duced, to which the fair portion of the spectators lend their tender 
contribution. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 429 

Such a man was exactly adapted to the excitement of the people 
of Clare ; and it must be admitted that, by his indefatigable exer- 
tions, his unremitting activity, and his devoted zeal, he most mate- 
rially assisted in the clectinn of Mr. O'Connell. While Mr. Steele 
and ()"Gorman Mahon harangued the people in one district, Mr. 
Lawless, who was also despatched upon a similar mission, applied 
his f:icultios of excitation in another. This gentleman has obtained 
deserved celebrity by his being almost the only individual among 
the Irish di-puties who remonstrated against the sacrifice of the 
rights of the forty-shilling freeholders. Ever since that period he 
has been eminently popular ; and although he may occasionally, by 
ebullitions of ill-regulated but generous enthusiasm, create a little 
merriment amongst those whose minds are not as susceptible of 
patriotic and disinterested emotion as his own, yet the conviction 
which is entertained of his honesty of purpose, confers ujion him 
a considerable intluence. "Honest Jack Lawless "is the designa- 
tion by which he has been known since the "wings" were in discus- 
sion. He has many distinguished qualities as a public speaker. 
His voice is deep, round, and mellow, and is diversified by a great 
variety of rich and harmonious intonation. His action is exceed- 
ingly graceful and appropriate ; he has a good figure, which, by a 
purposed swell and dilation of the shoidders, and an elaborate erect- 
ncss, he turns to good account ; and by dint of an easy fluency, of 
good diction, a solemn visage, an aquiline nose of no vulgar dimen- 
sion, eyes glaring underneath a shaggy brow with a certain fierce- 
ness of expi-ession, a quizzing-glass, which is gracefull_y dangled in 
any pauses of thought or suspensions of utterance, and, above all, 
by a certain attitude of dignity, which he assumes in the crisis of 
eloquence, accompanied with a flinging back of his coat, which sets 
his periods beautifully off", " Honest Jack " has become one of the 
most popular and eflicient speakers at the Association. Shortly 
after Mr. Lawless had been deapatched, a great reinforcement to the 
oi-atorical corps was sent down in the person of the celebrated 
Father Maguire, or, as he is habitually designated, "Father Tom." 
This gentleman had been for some time a parish priest in the county 
of Leitrim. He lived in a remote parish, where his talents were 
unappreciated. Some accident brought Mr. Pope, the itinerant 
controversalist, into contact with him. A challenge to defend the 



430 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

doctrines of his religion was tendered by the wandering disputant to 
the priest, and the latter at once accepted it. Maguire had given 
no previous jiroof of his abilities, and the Catholic body regretted 
the encounter. The parties met in this strange duel of theology. 
The interest created by their encounter was prodigious. Not only 
the room where their debates were carried on was crowded, but the 
whole of Sackville-street, where it was situated, was thronged with 
population. Pope brought to the combat great fluency, and a 
powerful declamation. Mnguiro was a master of scholastic logic. 
After several days of controversy, Pope was overthrown, and 
"Father Tom," as the champion of orthodoxy, became the object of 
popular adoration. A base conspiracy was got up to destroy his 
moral character, and by its failure raised him in the aflection of the 
multitude. He had been under great obligations to Mr. O'Connell, 
for his exertions upon his trial ; and from a jnst sentimciit of grati- 
tude, he tendered his services in Clare. His name alone was of 
great value ; and when his coming was announced, the people 
everywhere rushed forward to hail the vindicator of the national 
religion. He threw fresh ingredients into the caldron and contribu- 
ted to impart to the contest that strong religious chai'iicter which it 
is not the fault of the Association, but of the government, that 
every contest of the kind must assume. "Father Tom" was em- 
ployed upon a remarkable exploit. Mr. Augustine Butler, (he 
lineal descendant of the celebrated Sir Toby Butler, is a proprietor 
in Clare : he is a liberal Protestant, but supported Mr. Vescy Fitz- 
gerald. "Father Tom " proceeded from the town of Ennis to the 
county chapel where Mr. Butler's freeholders were assembled, in 
order to address them ; aud Mr. Butler with an intrepidity which 
did him credit, went forward to meet him. It was a singular 
encounter in the house of God. The Protestant landlord called 
upon his freeholders not to desert him. — "Father Tom" rose to 
address them in behalf of Mr. O'Connell. He is not greatly gifted 
with a command of decorated phraseology; but he is master of vig- 
orous language, and has a power of strong and simple reasoning, 
which is equally intelligible to all classes. He employs the syllo- 
gism of the schools as his chief weapon in argimient ; but uses it 
with such dexterity, that his auditors of the humblest class can 
follow him without being aware of the technical expedient by which 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 431 

he masters the understanding. His manner is ijeculjar: it is not 
flowery, nor declamatory, but is short, somewhat abrupt, and, to 
use the French phrase, is " (rancliant." His countenance is adapted 
to his mind, and is expressive of the reasoning and controversial 
faculties. A quick bine eye, a nose slightly turned up, a strong 
bi'ow, a complexion of mountain ruddiness, and thick lips, which 
are better formed for rude disdain than for polished sarcasm, are his 
characteristics. He assailed Mr. Butler with all his powers, and 
overthrew him. The topic to which ho addressed himself, was one 
which was not only calculated to move the tenants of Mr. Butler, 
but to stir Mr. Butler himself. He appealed to the memory of his 
celebrated Catholic ancestor, of which Mr. Butler is justly proud. 
He stated, that what Sir Toby Butler had been, Mr. O'Connell was ; 
and he adjured him not to stand up in opposition to an individual, 
whom he. was bound to sustain by a sort of hereditary obligation. 
His appeal carried the freeholders away, and one hundred and fifiy 
votes were secured to Mr. O'Connell. INIr. Maguire was seconded 
in this achievement by Mr. Dominick Ronayne, a barrister of the 
Association, of considerable talents, and who not only speaks the 
English language with eloquence, but is master of the Irish tongue ; 
and throwing an educated mind into the powerful idiom of the 
country, wrought with uncommon power upon the passions of the 
people. 

Mr. Shell was employed as counsel for Mr. O'Connell before the 
assessor ; but proceeded to the county Clare the day before the elec- 
tion commenced. On his arrival, he understood that an exertion 
was required in the parish of Corofin, which is situate upon the estate 
of Sir Edward O'Brien, who had given all his interest to Mr. Vcsey 
Fitzgerald. Sir Edward is the most opulent resident landlord in the 
county. In the parish of Corofin he had no less than three hundred 
votes ; and it was supposed that his freeholders would go with him. 
Mr. Shell determined to assail him ni the citadel of his strength, and 
proceeded upon the Sunday before the poll commenced to the chapel 
of Corofin. Sir Edward O'Brien having learned that this agitator 
intended this trespass upon his authority, resolved to anticipate him, 
and set off in his splendid equipage, drawn by four horses, to the 
mountains in which Corofin is situated. ThcAvhole population came 
down from their residences in the rocks, which are in the vicinity of 



432 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the town of Ennis, and advanced in large bands, waving green 
boughs, and preceded by fifes and pipers, upon the road. Their 
landlord was met by them on his way. They passed by him in 
silence, while they hailed his antagonist with shouts of applause, and 
attended him in triumph to the chapel. Sir Edward O'Brien lost 
his resolution at this spectacle ; and, feeling that he could have no 
influence in such a state of excitation, instead of going to the house 
of Catholic worship, proceeded to the church of Corofin. He left 
his carriage exactly opposite the doors of the chapel, which is im- 
mediately contiguous, and thus reminded the people of his Protest- 
antism, by a circumstance, of which, of course, advantage was 
instantaneously taken. Mr. Sheil arrived with a vast multitude of 
attendants at the chapel, which was crowded with a people, who 
had flocked from all quarters ; there a singular scene took place. 
Father Murphy, the parish priest, came to the entrance of the 
chapel, dressed in his surplice. When he appeared, the mul- 
titude fell back at his command, and arranged themselves on either 
side, so as to form a lane for the recei^tion of the agitator. Deep 
silence was imposed upon the people by the priest, who had a voice 
of subterraneous thunder, and appeared to hold them in absolute 
dominion. When Mr. Sheil had reached the threshold of the chapel, 
Father Murphy stretched forth his hand, and welcomed him to the 
performance of the good work. The figure and attitude of the priest 
were remarkable. My English reader draws his ordinary notion of 
a Catholic clergyman from the caricatures which are contained in 
novels, or represented in comedies upon the stage ; but the Irish 
priest, who has lately become a politician and a scholar, has not a 
touch of Foigardism about him ; and an artist would have found in 
Father Murphy rather a study for the enthusiastic Macbriar, who 
is so powerfully delineated in " Old Mortality," than a realization of 
the familiar notions of a clergyman of the Church of Rome. Sur- 
rounded by a dense multitude, whom he had hushed into profound 
silence, he presented a most imposing oliject. His form is tall, 
slender, and emaciated ; but was enveloped in his long robes, that 
gave him a peculiarly sacerdotal aspect. The hand which he stretched 
forth was ample, but worn to a skinny meagritude. His face was 
long, sunken, and cadaverous, but was illuminated by eyes blazing 
with all the fire of grenius and the enthusiasm of religion. His lank 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 433 

black hair fell clown his temples, and eyebrows of the same color 
stretched in thick straight lines along a lofty forehead, and threw 
over the whole countenance a deep shadow. The sun was shining 
with brilliancy, and rendered his figure, attired as it was in white 
garments, more conspicuous. The scenery about him was in har- 
mony ; it was wild and desolate, and crags, with scarce a blade of 
verdure shooting through their crevices, rose everywhere around 
him. The interior of the chapel, at the entrance of which he stood, 
was visible. It was a large pile of building, consisting of bare walls, 
rudely thrown up, with a floor of clay, and at the extremity stood 
an altar made of a few boards clumsily put together. 

It was on the thi'eshold of this mountain temple that the envoy of 
the Association was hailed with a solemn greeting. The priest pro- 
ceeded to the altar, and commanded the people to abstain, during 
the divine ceremony, from all political thinking or occupation. He 
recited the mass with great fervency and simplicity of manner, and 
with all the evidences of unaffected piety. However familiar from 
daily repetition with the ritual, he pronounced it with a just em- 
phasis, and went through the various forms which are incidental 
to it with singular propriety and grace. The people were deeply- 
attentive ; and it was observable that most of them could read, for 
they had prayer-books in their hands, which they read with a quiet 
devotion. Mass being finished, Father Murphy threw his vestments 
off, and, without laying down the priest, assumed the politician. He 
addressed the people in Irish, and called upon them to vote for 
O'Connell in the name of their country and of their religion. 

It was a most extraordinaiy and powerful display of the externals 
of eloquence, and as far as a person unacquainted with the language 
could form an estimate of the matter by the eftects produced upon 
the auditory, must have been pregnant with genuine oratory. It 
will be supposed that this singular priest addressed his parishoners 
in tones and gestures as rude as the wild dialect to which he was 
giving utterance. His actions and attitudes were as graceful as those 
of an accomplished actor, and his intonations were soft, pathetic, 
denunciatory, and conjuring, according as his theme varied, and as 
he had recourse to different expedients to influence the people. The 
general character of this strange harangue was impassioned and sol- 
emn, but he occasionally had recourse to ridicule, and his counte- 



434 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

nance at once adapted itself with a liappy readiness to derision. 
Tlie finest spirit of sarcasm gleamed over his features, and shouts of 
laughter attended his description of a miserable Catholic who should 
prove recreant to the great cause, by making a sacrifice of his coun- 
try to his landlord. The close of his speech was peculiarly effective. 
He became inflamed by the power of his emotions, and while he 
raised himself into the loftiest attitude to which he could ascend, he 
laid one hand on the altar, and shook the other in the spirit of almost 
jirophetic admonition, and while his eyes blazed and seemed to start 
from his forehead, thick drops fell down his face, and his voice rolled 
through lips livid with passion and covered with foam. It is almost 
unnecessary to say that such an appeal was irresistible. The multi- 
tude burst into shouts of acclamation, and would have been ready to 
mount a battery roaring Mnth cannon at his command. Two days 
after the results were felt at the hustings ; and while Sir Edward 
O'Brien stood aghast, -Father Murphj' marched into Ennis at the 
bead of his tenantry, and polled them to a man in fovor of Daniel 
O'Connell. But I am anticipating. 

The notion which had gone abroad in Dublin that the priests were 
lukewarm, was utterly unfounded. With the exception of Dean 
O'Shaughnessy, who is a relative of Mr. Fitzgerald (and for whom 
there is perhaps much excuse), and a Father Cofiey, who has since 
been deserted by his congregation, there was scarcely a clergyman 
in the county who did not use his utmost influence over the peasantry. 
On the day on which Mr. O'Connell arrived, you met a priest in 
every street who assured you that the battle should be won, and 
jiledged himself that "the man of the people " should be returned. 
" The man of the people " arrived in the midst of the loudest accla- 
mations. Near thirt}' thousand people were crowded into the streets 
of Ennis, and were unceasing in their shouts. Banners were sus- 
jiended from every window ; and women of great beauty were every- 
where seen waving handkerchiefs, with the figure of the patriot 
stamped upon them. Processions of freeholders, with their parish 
priests at their head, marched like troops to difi"erent quarters of the 
city ; and it w'as remarkable that not a single individual was intoxi- 
cated. The most perfect order and regularity prevailed ; and the 
large bodies of police which had been collected in the town stood 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 435 

"without occupation. These were evidences of organization, from 
■which it was easy to conjecture the result. 

The election opened, and the court-house in which the sheriff read 
the writ presented a new and striking scene. On the left hand of the 
sheriff stood a cabinet minister, attended by the whole body of the 
aristocracy of the county of Clare. Their appearance indicated at 
once their superior rank and their profound mortification. An ex- 
pression of bitterness and of wounded pride was stamped in various 
modifications of resentment upon their countenances ; while others 
who were in the interest of Mr. Fitzgerald, and who were small 
Protestant proprietors, affected to look big and important, and swelled 
themselves into gentry upon the credit of voting for the minister. 
On the right hand of the sheriff stood Mr. O'Connell, with scarcely 
a single gentlemen by his side ; for most even of the Catholic pro- 
prietors had abandoned him, and joined the ministerial candidate. 
But the body of the court presented the power of Mr. O'Connell in 
a mass of determined peasants, amongst whom black coats and sacer- 
dotal visages were seen felicitously intermixed, outside the balustrade 
of the gallei-y on the left hand of the sheriff. Before the business 
began, a gentleman was observed on whom every eye was turned. 
He had indeed chosen a most singular position ; for instead of sitting 
like the other auditors on the seats in the gallery, he leaped over it, 
and, suspending himself above the crowd, afforded what was an ob- 
ject of wonder to the great body of the spectators, and of indigna- 
tion to the high sheriff. The attire of the individual who was thus 
perched in this dangerous position was sufficiently strange. He had 
a coat of Irish tabiuet, with glossy ti'owsers of the same national 
material ; he wore no waistcoat ; a blue shirt lined with streaks of 
white was open at his neck ; a broad green sash, with a medal of 
"the order of Liberators " at the end of it, hung conspicuously over 
his breast ; and a profusion of black curls curiously festooned about 
his temples, shadowed a veiy handsome and expressive counte- 
nance, a' great part of which was occupied by -whiskers of a bushy 
amplitude. "Who, Sir, are you?" exclaimed the high sheriff, in a 
tone of imperious solemnity, which he had acquired at Canton, where 
he had long resided in the sei'vice of the East India Company. But 
I must pause here — and even at the hazard of breaking the regular 
thread of the narration, I cannot resist the temptation of describing 



436 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the high sheriff. When he stood up with his wand of oiEcc, the con- 
ti'ast between him and the aerial gentlemen whom he was addressing 
was to the highest degree ludicrous. Of the latter some conception 
has already been given. He looked a chivalrous dandy, who, under 
the most fantastical apparel, carried the spirit and intrepidity of an 
exceedingly fine fellow. Mr. High Sheriff had, at an early period 
of his life, left his native county of Clare, and had migrated to 
China, where, if I may judge from his manners and demeanor, he 
must have been in immediate communication with a mandarin of the 
first class, and made a Chinese functionary his favorite model. I 
should conjecture that he must long have presided over the packing 
of Boliea, and that some tincture of that agreeable vegetable had 
been infused into his complexion. An oriental sedateness and 
gravity ai'e sj^read over a countenance upon which a smile seldom 
presumes to trespass. He gives utterance to intonations which were 
originally contracted in the East, but have been since mehjdized by 
liis religious habits into a puritanical chant in Ireland. The Chinese 
language is monosyllabic, and Mr. Molony has extended its character 
to the English tongue ; for he breaks all his words into separate and 
elaborate divisions, to each of which he bestows a due quantity of 
deliberate intonation. Upon arriving in Ireland he addicted himself 
to godliness, having previously made great gains in China, and he 
has so contrived as to impart the' cadences of Wesley to the accentu- 
ation of Confucius. 

Such was the aspect of the great public functionary, who, rising 
with a peculiar magister-iality of altitude, and stretching forth the 
emblem of his power, inquired of the gentleman who was suspended 
from the gallery who he was. '' My name is O'Gorman Mahon," 
■was the reply, delivered with a firmness which clearly showed that 
the person who had conveyed this piece of intelligence thought very 
little of a high sheriff and a great deal of O'Gorman Mahon. The 
sheriff had been offended by the general appearance of Mr. Mahon, 
who had distracted the public attention from his own contemplation ; 
but he was particularly irritated by observing the insurgent symbol 
of "the order of Liberators" dangling at his breast. "I tell that 
gentleman," said Mr. Molony, "to take off that badge." There was 
a moment's pause, and then the following answer was slowly and 
articulately pronounced : " This gentleman (laying his hand on his 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 437 

breast) tells that gentleman (pointing with the other to the sheriff}, 
that if that geutleman presumes to touch this gentleman, that this 
gentleman will defend himself against that gentleman, or any other 
gentleman, while he has got the arm of a gentleman to protect him." 
This extraordinary sentence was followed by a loud burst of applause 
from all parts of the court-house. The high sheriff looked aghast. 
The expression of self-satisfaction and magisterial complacency passed 
off his visage, and he looked utterly blank and dejected. After an 
interval of irresolution down he sat. "The soul" of O'Gorman 
Mahon (to use Curran's expression) " walked forth in its own maj- 
esty " ; he looked " redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled." The 
medal of the "' order of Liberators " was pressed to his heart. 
O'Connell surveyed him with gratitude and admiration ; and the first 
blow was struck, which sent dismay into the heart of the party of 
■which the sheriff was considered to be an adherent. 

This was the opening incident of this novel drama. When the 
sensation which it had created had in some degree subsided, the 
business of the day went on. Sir Edward O'Brien proposed Mr. 
Vescy Fitzgerald as a proper person to serve in parliament. Sir 
Edward had upon former occasions been the vehement antagonist of 
Mr. Fitzgerald, and in one instance a regular battle had been fought 
between the tenantry of both parties. It was supposed that this 
feud had left some acrimonious feelings which were not quite extinct 
behind, and many conjectured that the zeal of Sir Edward in favor 
of his competitor was a little feigned. This notion was confirmed 
by the circumstance that Sir Edward O'Brien's son (the member for 
Ennis)* had subscribed to the Catholic rent, was a member of the 
Association, and had recently made a vigorous speech in parliament 
in defence of that body. It is, however, probable that the feudal 
pride of Sir Edward O'Brien, which was deeply mortified by the de- 
fection of his vassals, absorbed every other feeling, and that, how- 
ever indifferent he might have been on Mr. Fitzgerald's account, yet 
that he was exceedingly irritated upon his own. He appeared at 
least to be profoundly moved, and had not spoken above a few min- 
utes when tears fell from his eyes. He has a strong Irish chui-acter 
impressed upon him. It is said that he is lineally descended from 

* William Smith O'Biien, late member for Limerick ; oue of the traversers indicted 
for high treason in 1848, and sentenced to transportation. 



438 TREASLTRY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Brian Boirumhe. He is squat, bluff, and impassioned. An expres- 
sion of good nature, rather than of good humor, is mixed up with a 
certain rough consciousness of his own dignity, which in his most 
familiar moments he never lays aside, for the Milesian predominates 
in his demeanor, and his royal recollections wait perpetually upon 
him. He is a great favorite with the people, who are attached to 
the descendants of the ancient indigenous families of the county, and 
who see in Sir Edward O'Brien a good landlord, as well as the rep- 
resentative of Brian Boirumhe. I was not a little astonished at 
seeing him weep upon the hustings. It was, however, observed to 
me, that he is given to the "melting mood," although his tears do not 
fall like the gum of "the Araljian tree." In the House of Commons 
he once produced a great effect by bursting into tears, while he de- 
scribed the misery of the people of Clare, although, at the same 
time his granaries were full. It was said that his hustings pathos 
was of the same quality, and arose from the peculiar susceptibility 
of the lachrymatory nerves, and not from any very nice fibres about 
the heart ; still I am convinced that his emotion was genuine, and 
that he was profoundly touched. He complained that he had been 
deserted by his tenants, although he had deserved well at their 
hands ; and exclaimed that the country was not one fit for a gentle- 
man to reside in, when property lost all its influence, and things 
were brought to such a pass. The motion was seconded by Sir A. 
Fitzgerald in a few words. I\Ir. Gore, a gentleman of very large 
estate, took occasion to deliver his opinions in favor of Mr. Fitz- 
gerald ; and O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele proposed Mr. O'Con- 
nell. It then fell to to the rival candidates to speak, and Mr. Vesey 
Fitzgerald, having been first put in nomination, first addressed the 
freeholders. He seemed to me to be about five and forty years of 
age, his hair being slightly marked with a little edging of scarcely 
perceptible silver, bat the care with which it was distributed and 
arranged, showed that the cabinet minister had not yet entirely 
dismissed his Lothario recollections. I had heard, before I had even 
seen Mr. Fitzgerald, that he was in great favor with the Calistas at 
Almack's ; and I was not surprised at it, on a minute inspection of 
his aspect and deportment. It is not that he is a handsome man, 
(though he is far from being the reverse) , but that there is an air of 
blended sweetness and assurance, of easy intrepidity and gentle 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 439 

gracefulness about him, wlii(;li are considered to be eminently win- 
ning. His countenance, though too fully circular, and a little 
tinctured with Vermillion, is agreeable. The eyes are of bright 
hazel, and have an expression of ever earnest frankness, which an 
acute observer might suspect, while his mouth is full of a strenuous 
solicitude to jolcase. The moment he rose I perceived that he was 
an accomplished gentleman ; and when 1 had heard him utter a few 
sentences, was satisfied that he was a most accomplished speaker. 
He delivered one of the most effective and dexterous speeches which 
it has ever been my good fortime to hear. There were evident 
marks of deep pain and of fear to be traced in his features, which 
were not free from the haggardness of many an anxious vigil ; but 
though he was manifestly mortified in the extreme, he studiously 
refrained from all exasperating sentiment or expression. He spoke 
at first with a graceful melancholy, rather than a tone of impassioned 
adjuration. He intimated that it was rather a measure of rigorous, 
if not unjustifiable policy, to display the power of the Association 
in throwing an individual out of parliament who had been the warm 
and uniform advocate of the Catholic cause during his whole political 
life. He enumerated the instances in which he had exerted himself 
in behalf of that body which were now dealing with him with such 
severity, and referred to his services with regard to the college of 
Maynooth. The part of his speech which was most powerful, related 
to his father. The latter had opposed the Union, and had many 
claims upon the national gratitude. The topic was one which 
required to be most delicately touched, and no orator could treat it 
with a more exquisite nicety than Mr. Fitzgerald. He became as he 
advanced, and the recollection of his father pressed itself more im- 
mediately upon his mind, more impassioned. At the moment he 
was speaking, his father, to whom he is most tenderly attached, and 
by whom he is most beloved, was lying upon a bed from whence it 
was believed that he would never rise, and efforts had been 
made to conceal from the old man the contest in which his son was 
involved. It was impossible to mistake genuine grief, and when 
Mr. Fitzgerald paused for an instant, and turning away, wiped off the 
tears that came gushing into his eyes, he won the sympathies of every 
one about him. There were few who did not give the same evidence 
of emotion : and when he sat down, although the great majoi'ity 



440 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of the audience were strongly opposed to him, and were enthusiasts 
in favor of the rival candidate, a loud and unanimous burst of accla- 
mation shook the court-house. 

Mr. O'Conuell rose to address the people in reply. It was mani- 
fest that he considered a great exertion to be requisite in order to do 
away the impression which his antagonist had produced. It 
was clear that he was collecting all his might, to those who 
were acquainted with the workings of his physiognomy. Mr. 
O'Connell bore Mr. Fitzgerald no sort of personal aversion, 
but he determined in this exigency to have little mercy 
on his feelings, and to employ all the power of vitupera- 
tion of which he was possessed against him. This was abso- 
lutely necessary ; for if mere dexterous fencing had been resorted 
to by Mr. O'Connell, many might have gone away with the opinion 
that, after all, Mr. Fitzgerald had been thanklessly treated by the 
Catholic body. It was therefore disagreeably requisite to render 
him for the moment odious. Mr. O'Connell began by awakening 
the passions of the multitude in an attack on Mr. Fitzgerald's allies. 
Mr. Gore had lauded him highly. This Mr. Gore is of Cromwel- 
lian descent, and the people detest the memory of the Protector to 
this day. There is a tradition (I know not whether it has the least 
foundation) that the ancestor of this gentleman's family was anailor 
by trade in the Puritan army. Mr. O'Connell, without any direct 
reference to the fact, used a set of metaphors, such as "striking the 
nail on the head," "putting a nail into a coffin," which at once re- 
called the associations which were attached to the name of Mr. Gore, 
and roars of laughter assailed that gentleman on every side. Mr. 
Gore has the character of being not only very opulent, but of bearing 
regard to his possessions proportioned to their extent. Nothing is so 
uni^opular as prudence in Ireland ; and INIr. O'Connell rallied Mr. 
Gore to such a point upon this head, and that of his supposed origin, 
that the latter completely sunk under the attack. He next pro- 
ceeded to Mr. Fitzgerald, and having drawn a picture of the late Mr. 
Perceval, he turned round and asked of the rival candidate with 
what face lie could call himself their friend when the first act of his 
political life was to enlist himself under the banners of the " bloody 
Perceval." This epithet (whether it be well or ill-deserved is not 
the question) was sent into the hearts of the people with a force of 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 441 

expression and a furious vehemence of voice that created a great 
sensation amongst tiie crowd and turned Ihe tide against Mr. Fitz- 
gerald. "This, too," said Mr. O'Connell, "is the friend of Peel — 
the bloody Perceval and the candid and manly Mr. Peel — and he is 
our fi"iend ! and he is everybody's friend ! The friend of the Cath- 
olic was the friend of the bloody Perceval, and is the friend of the 
candid and manly Mr. Peel ! " 

It is unnecessary to go through Mr. O'Connell's speech. It was 
stamped with all his powerful characteristics, and galled Mr. Fitzge- 
rald to the core. That gentleman frequently muttered an interroga- 
tory, "Is this fair?" when Mr. O'Connell was nsing some legitimate 
sophistication against him. He seemed particularlj' offended when 
his adversary said, "I never shed tears in public," which was in- 
tended as a mockery of Mr. Fitzgei'ald's references to his father. It 
will be thought Ijy some sensitive persons that Mr. O'Connell was 
not quite warranted in this harsh dealing, but he had no alternative. 
Mr. Fitzgerald had made a very powerful speech, and the effect was- 
to be got rid of. In such a warfare a man must not pause in the 
selection of his weapons, and Mr. O'Connell is not the man to hesi- 
tate in the use of the rhetorical sabre. Nothing of any peculiar 
interest occurred after Mr. O'Connell's speech upon the first day. 
On the second the polling commenced ; and on that da}', in conse- 
quence of an expedient adopted by Mr. Fitzgerald's committee, the 
parties were nearly equal. A Catholic freeholder cannot, in strict- 
ness, vote at an election without making Ji certain declatration upon 
oath respecting his religious opinions, and obtaining a certificate of 
his having done so from a magistrate. It is usual for candidates to 
agree to dispense with the necessity of taking this oath. It was,. 
however, of importance to Mr. Fitzgerald to delay the election ; 
and with that view his committee required that the declaration 
should be taken. Mr. O'Connell's committee were unprepared for 
this form, and it was with the utmost difficulty that magistrates 
could be procured to attend to receive the oath. It was therefore 
impossible, on the first day, for Mr. O'Connell to bring his forces 
into the field, and thus the parties appeared nearly equal. To those 
"who did not know the real cause of this circumstance, it appeared 
ominous, and the O'Connellites looked sufliciently blank ; but the 
next day every thing was remedied. The freeholders were sworn 



442 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

en masse. They were brought into a yard enclosed within four 
■walls. Twenty-five were placed against each wall, and they simul- 
taneously repeated the oath. When one batch of swearers had been 
disposed of, the person who administered the declaration, turned to 
the adjoining division, and despatched them. Thus he went thi'ough 
the quadrangle, and in the course of a few minutes was able to dis- 
charge one hundred patriots upon Mr. Fitzgerald. It may be said 
that an oath ought to be more solemnly administered. In reply it 
is only necessary to observe, that the declaration in question related 
principally to "the Pretender," and when "the legislature persevere 
in compelling the name of God to be thus taken in vain," the ritual 
becomes appropriately farcical, and the manner of the thing is only 
adapted to the ludicrous matter upon which it is legally requisite 
that Heaven should be attested ! The oath which is imposed upon a 
Roman Catholic is a violation of the first precept of the decalogue ! 
This species of machinery having been thus applied to the art of 
swearing, the effecttS upon the poll soon became manifest, and Mr. 
O'Counell ascended to a triumphant majority. It became clear that 
the landlords had lost all their power, and that their struggles were 
utterly hopeless. Still they pei'sevei'ed in dragging the few serfs 
whom they had under their control to the hustings, and in protract- 
ing the election. It was Mr. Fitzgerald's own wish, I believe, to 
abandon the contest, when its ultimate issue was alieady certain; 
but his friends insisted that the last man whom they could command 
should be polled out. Thus the election was procrastinated. In 
ordinary cases, the interval between the first and the last day of 
polling is monotonous and dull ; but during the Clare election so 
many ludicrous and extraordinary incidents were every moment 
occurring, as to relieve any attentive observer from every influence 
of ennui. The writer of these jiages was under the necessity of 
remaining during the day in the sheriff's booth, where questions of 
law were chiefly discussed, but even here there was much matter for 
"entertainment. The sherifl" afforded a perpetual fund of amusement. 
He sat with his wand of oflice leaning against his shoulder, and al- 
ways ready for his grasp. When there was no actual business going 
forward, he still preserved a magisterial dignity of deportment, and 
with half-closed eyelids, and throwing Ijack his head, and forming 
with his chin an ol)tuse angle with the horizon, reproved any in- 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 443 

dulgence in illicit mirth which might chance to pass amongst the 
bar. The gentlemen who were professionally engaged having dis- 
covered the chief foible of the sheriff', which consisted in the most 
fontastical notions of himself, vied with each other in playing upon 
his weakness. " I feel that I address myself to the first man of the 
county," was the usual exordium with which every legal argument 
was opened. The sheriff, instead of perceiving the sneer which 
involuntarily played round the lips of the mocking sycophant, smiled 
with an air of Malvolio condescension, and bowed his head. Then 
came some noise from the adjoining liooths, upon which the sheriff' 
used to start up and exclaim, "I declare I do not think that I am 
treated with proper respect — verily I'll go forth and quell this 
tumult — I'll show them I am the first man in the county, and I'll 
connnit somebody." With that "the first man in the county,"' with 
a step slightly accelerated by his resentment at a supposed indignity 
to himself, used to proceed in quest of a riot, but generally returned 
with a good-humored expression of face, observing : — "It was only 
Mr. O'Connell, and I must say, when I remonstrated with him he 
paid me proper respect. He is quite a different person from what I 
had heard. But let nobody imagine that I was afraid of him. I'd 
commit him, or Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, if I was not treated with 
proper respect ; for by virtue of my ofBce I am the first man in the 
county." 

A 3'oung gentleman (Mr. Whyte) turned his talent in mimicry to 
a very pleasant and useful account. He acted as agent to Mr. 
O'Connell, in a booth of which the chief officer, or sherifl"s deputy, 
as he is called, was believed to be a partizan of Mr. Fitzgerald, and 
used to delay Mr. O'Connell's tallies. A tumult would then ensue, 
and the deputy would then raise his voice in a menacing tone against 
the friends of Mr. O'Connell. The high sheriff" himself had been 
accustomed to go to the entrance of the different booths and to 
command silence with his long-drawn and dismal ejaculations. When 
the deputy was bearing it with a high hand, Mr. Whyte would some- 
times leave the booth, and standing at the outward edge of the 
crowd, just at the moment that the deputy was about to commit 
some partizan of Mr. O'Connell, the mimic would exclaim in a death- 
bell voice, "Silence, Mr. Deputy, you are exceedingly disorderly — 
silence." The deputy being enveloped by the multitude, could not 



444 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

see the individual who thus addressed him, and believing it to be the 
sheriff, sat down confounded at the admonition, while Mr. O'Connell's 
tally went rapidly on, and the disputed vote was allowed. These 
vagaries enlivened occupations which in their nature were sufficiently 
dull. But the sheriff's booth afforded matter more deserving of note 
than his singularities. Charges of undue influence were occasionallj'- 
bnjuglit forward, which exhibited the character of the election in its 
strongest colors, One incident I particularly remember. An 
attorney employed by Mr. Fitzgerald rushed in and exclaimed that 
a priest was terrifying the voters. This accusation produced a 
powerful effect. The counsel for Mr. O'Connell defied the attorney 
to make out his charge. The assessor very properly required that 
the priest should attend ; and behold Father Murphy of Corofin ! 
His solemn and spectral aspect struclc everybody. He advanced with 
fearlessness to the bar, behind which the sheriff was seated, and 
enquired what the charge was which had been preferred against him, 
with a smile of ghastly derision. "You were looking at my voters," 
cries the attorney. "But I said nothing," replied the priest, "and I 
suppose that I am to be permitted to look at my parishioners." 
" Not with such a face as that ! " cried Mr. Dogherty, one of Mr. 
Fitzgerald's counsel. This produced a loud laugh ; for, certainly, 
the countenance of Father Murphy was fraught with no ordinary 
terrors. "And this, then," exclaimed Mr. O'Connell's counsel, "is 
the charge you bring against the priests. Let us see if there be an 
act of parliament which prescribes that a Jesuit shall wear a mask." 
At this instant, one of the agents of Mr. O'Connell preei})itated him- 
self into the room, and cried out, "Mr. Sherifl", we have no fair play 
— Mr. Singleton is frightening his tenants — he caught hold of one 
of them JList now, and threatened vengeance against him." This 
accusation came admirably apropos. "What ! " exclaimed the advo- 
cate of Mr. O'Connell, "is this to be endured? Do we live in a free 
country, and under a constitution ? Is a landlord to commit a battery 
with impunity, and is a priest to be indicted for his physiognomy, 
and to be found guilty of a look ? " Thus a valuable set-off against 
Father Murphy's eyebrows was obtained. After a long debate, the 
assessor decided that, if either a priest or a landlord actually inter- 
rupted the poll, thej' should be indiscriminately committed ; but 
thought the present a case only for admonition. Father Murphy 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 445 

•was accordingly restored to his physiognomical functions. The 
matter had been scarcely disposed of, when a loud shout was heard 
from the multitude outside the court-house, which had gathered in 
thousands, and yet generally presei"ved a profound tranquillity. 
The large window in the sheriff's booth gave an opportunity of 
observing whatever took place in the square below ; and, attracted 
by the tremendous uproar, everybody ran to see what was going on 
amongst the crowd. The tumult was produced by the arrival of 
some hundred freeholders from Kilrush, with their landloi'd, Mr. 
Vandeleur, at their head. He stood behind a carriage, and, with his 
hat off was seen vehemently addressing the tenants who followed 
him. It was impossible to hear a word which he uttered ; but his 
gesture was sufficiently significant : he stamped, and waved his hat, 
and shook his clenched hand. While he thus adjured them, the 
crowd through which they were passing, assailed them with cries, 
"Vote for your country, boys ! Vote for the old religion ! Three 
cheers for liberty ! Down with Vesey, and hurrah for O'Conncll ! " 
These were the exclamations which rent the air as they proceeded. 
They followed their landlord until they had reached a part of the 
square where Mr. O'Connell lodged, and before which a large plat- 
form had been erected, which communicated with the window of his 
apartment, and to which he could advance whenever it was necessary 
to address the people. When Mr. Vandeleur's freeholders had 
attained this spot, Mr. O'Connell i-ushed forward on the platform, 
and lifted up his arm. A tremendous shout succeeded, and in an 
instant Mr. Vandeleur was deserted by his tenants. This platform 
exhibited some of the most remarkable scenes enacted in this 
strange drama of "The Clare Election." It was sustained I)y pillars 
of wood, and stretched out several feet from the wall to which it was 
attached. Some twenty or thirty persons could stand upon it at the 
same time. A large quantity of green boughs were turned about it ; 
and from the sort of bower which they formed, occasional orators 
addressed the people during the day. Father Sheehan, a clergyman 
from Waterford, who had been mainly instrumental in the overthrow 
of the Beresfords, displayed from this spot his popular abilities. 
Dr. Kenny, a Waterford surgeon, thinking that "the times were out 
of joint," came "to set them right." Father Maguii-e, Mr. Lawless, 
indeed, the whole company of orators, performed on this theatre 



44-G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

with indefatigable energy. Mirth and declamation, and anecdote 
and grotesque delineation, and mimicry, were all blended together 
for the public entertainment. One of the most amusing and attrac- 
tive topics was drawn from the adherence of Father Coffey to Mr. 
Fitzgerald. His manners, his habits, his dress, were all selected as- 
materials for ridicule and invective ; and puns, not the less effective ' 
because they were obvious, were heaped upon his name. The scora 
and detestation with which he was treated by the mob, clearly proved 
that a priest has no influence over them when he attempts to run 
counter to their political j)assions. He can hurry them on in the 
career into which their own feelings impel them, but he cannot turn 
them into another course. Many incidents occurred about this 
rostrum, which, if matter did not crowd too fast upon me, I should 
stop to detail. I have not room for a minute narration of all that 
was intei-esting at this election, which would occupy a volume, and 
must limit myself to one, but that a very striking circumstance. 
The generality of the orators were heard with loud and clamorous 
approbation ; but, at a late hour one evening, and when it was 
growing rapidly dark, a priest came forward on the platform, who 
addressed the multitude in Irish. There was not a word uttered by 
the people. Ten thousand peasants were assembled before the 
speaker, and a profound stillness hung over the living, but almost 
breathless mass. For minutes they continued thus deeply attentive, 
and seemed to be struck with awe as he proceeded. Suddenly, I 
saw the whole multitude kneel down, in one concurrent genuflection. 
They were engaged in silent prayer, and when the priest arose (for 
he too had knelt down on the platform), they .also stood up together 
from their orison. The movement was performed with the facility 
of a regimental evolution. I asked (being unacquainted with the 
language) what it was that had occasioned this extraordinary spec- 
tacle ? and was informed that the orator had stated to the people that 
one of his own parishioners, who had voted for Mr. Fitzgerald, had 
just died ; and he called upon the multitude to pray to God for the 
repose of his soul, and the forgiveness of the offence which he had 
committed in taking the bribery oath. Money had been his induce- 
ment to give his sufirage against Mr. O'Connell. Thus it was the day 
passed, and it was not until nearly nine o'clock that those who were 
actively engaged in the election went to dinner. There a new scene 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 44^7 

was opened. In a small room in a mean tavern, the whole body of 
leading patriots, counsellors, attorneys, and agents, with divers 
interloping partakei's of election hospitality, were crammed and piled 
upon one another, while Mr. O'Connell sat at the head of the feast 
almost overcome with fatigue, but yet sustained by that vitality 
which success produces. Enormous masses were strewed upon the 
deal boards, at which the hungry masticators proceeded to their 
operations. The more intellectual season of potations succeeded. 
Toasts were then proposed, and speeches pronounced, and the usual 
"hip, hip, hurra!" with unusual accompaniments of exultation, 
followed. The feats of the day were then narrated : — the blank 
looks of Mr. Hickman (Mr. Fitzgerald's confidential solicitor and 
conducting agent), whose face had lost all its natural hilarity, and 
looked at the election like a full moon in a storm ; and the tears of 
Sir Edward O'Brien, were alternately the subjects of merriment. 
Mr. Whyte was called upon for an imitation of the sheriff, when he 
used to ride upon an elephant at Calcutta. But in the midst of this 
conviviality, which was heightened by the consciousness that there 
was no bill to be paid by gentlemen who were the guests of their 
country, and long before any inebriating effect was observable, a 
solemn and spectral figure used to stride in, and the same deep 
chui-ch-yard voice which had previously startled my ears, raised its 
awful peal, while it exclaimed, "The wolf, the wolf is on the walk. 
Shepherds of the people, what do you here? Is it meet that you 
should sit in joyance, while the freeholders remain unprovided, and 
temptation, in the shape of famine, is amongst them? Arise, I say, 
arise — the wolf, the wolf is on the walk." 

Such was the disturbing adjuration of Father Murphy of Corolin, 
whose enthusiastic sense of duty never deserted him, and who, when 
the feast was unfinished, entered like the figure of death in an Egyp- 
tian banquet. He walked round the room with a measured pace, 
chasing the revellers before him, and repeating the same dismal 
warning, " The wolf, the wolf is upon the walk ! " Nothing was 
comparable to the aspect of Fatlier Murphy upon these occasions, 
except the physiognomy of Mr. Lawless. This gentleman, who had 
been usefully exerting himself during the whole day, somewhat 
reasonably expected that he should be permitted to enjoy the just 
rewards of patriotism for a few hours without any nocturnal moles- 



448 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tation. It was about the time that the exhilarating influence of his 
eloquent chalices was beginning to display itself that the dismal cry 
was wont to come upon him. The look of despair with which he 
surveyed this unrelenting foe to conviviality was almost as ghastly 
as that of his merciless disturber ; and as, like another Tantalus, he 
saw the draughts of pleasantness hurried away, a schoolmaster who 
sat by him, and who "was abroad" during the election, used to 

exclaim — 

" A labris sitiens fngientia captat 
Fluraiua." 

It was in vain to remonstrate against Father Murphy, who insisted 
that the whole company should go forth to meet " the wolf upon the 
walk." Upon going down stairs, the lower apartments were found 
thronged with freeholders and priests. To the latter had been as- 
signed the office of providing food forsucli of the peasants as lived at 
too great distance from the town to return immediately home ; and 
each clergjman was empowered to give an order to the victuallers 
and tavern-keepers to furnish the bearer with a certain quantity of 
meat and beer. The use of whiskey was forbidden. There were 
two remarkable features observable in the discharge of this office. 
The peasant who had not tasted food perhaps for twenty-four hours 
remained in perfect patience and tranquillity until his turn arrived to 
speak "to his reverence;" and the Catholic clergy continued with 
unwearied assiduity and the most amiable solicitude, though them- 
selves quite exhausted with fatigue, in the performance of this neces- 
sary labor. There they stayed until a late hour in the morning, and 
until every claimant had been contented. It is not wonderful that such 
men, animated by such zeal and operating upon so grateful and so 
energetic a peasantry, should have effected what they succeeded in 
accomplishing. The poll at length closed ; and after an excellent 
argument delivered by the assessor, Mr. Eichard Keatinge, he in- 
structed the sheriff to return Mr. O'Connell as duly elected. The 
court-house was again crowded, as on the first day, and Mr. Fitz- 
gerald appeared at the head of the defeated aristocracy. They 
looked profoundly melancholy. Mr. Fitzgerald himself did not affect 
to disguise the deep pain which he felt, but preserved that graceful- 
ness and perfect good temper which had characterized him during 
the contest, and which, at its close, disarmed hostility of all its ran- 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 449 

cor. Mr. O'Conncll made a speech dlstingnishcd by just feeling and 
good taste, and begged that Mr. Fitzgerald woidd forgive him if he 
had upon the first daj- given him any sort of otlence. Mr. Fitzger- 
ald came forward and unaffectedly assured him that whatever was 
said should be forgotten. He was again hailed with universal ac- 
clamation, and delivered a speech which could not surpass, in good 
judgment and persuasiveness, that with which he had opened the 
contest, but was not inferior to it. He left an impression which 
hereafter will, in all probability, I'euder his return for the county 
of Clare a matter of certainty ; and, upon the other hand, I feel 
convinced that he has himself carried away from the scene of that 
contention, in which he sustained a defeat, but lost no honor, a con- 
viction that not only the interests of Ireland, but the safety of the 
empire, require that the claims of seven millions of liis fellow-citi- 
zens should be conceded. Mr. Fitzerald, during the progress of the 
election, could not refrain from repeatedlj'^ intimating his astonish- 
ment at what he saw, and from indulging in melancholy forebodings 
of the events of which these incidents are perhaps but the heralds. 
To do him justice, he appeared at moments utterly to forget himself , 
and to be absorbed in the melancholy presages which pressed them- 
selves upon him. "Where is all this to end? " was a question fre- 
quentlj' put in his presence, and from which he seemed to shrink. 
At the close of the poll, Mr. Sheil spoke in the following terms : — 
I am anxious to avail myeelf of this opportunity to make a repara- 
tion to Mr. Fitzgerald. Before I had the honor of hearing that gen- 
tleman, and of witnessing the conciliator}' demeanor by which he is 
distinguished, I hud in another place expressed myself with regard 
to his political conduct, in language to ■which I believe that Mr. 
Fitzgerald referred upon the first day of the election, and which was, 
perhaps, too deeply tinctured with that animosity which is almost 
inseparable from the passions by which this country is so unhappily 
divided. It is but an act of justice to Mr. Fitzgerald to say, that, 
however wo may be under the necessity of opposing him as a niem- 
•bev of an administration hostile to our body, it is impossible to 
entertain towards him a sentiment of individual hostility ; and I 
confess, that, after having observed the admirable temper with 
which he encountered his antagonists, I cannot but regret that, 
before I had the means of forming a just estimate of his personal 



4-50 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

character, I should have indulged in remarks in which too much 
acidity may have been infused. The situation in which Mr. Fitz- 
gerald was placed, was peculiarl}" trying to his feelings. He had 
been long in possession of this county. Though we considered him 
as an inefBcicnt friend, avo Averc not entitled to account him an 
opponent. Under these circumstances it may liave appeared harsh, 
and perhaps unkind, that we should liave selected him as the nr^t 
object for tlie manifestation of our power ; another would have found 
it difficult not to give way to tlic language of resentment and of 
reproach, but so far from doing so, his defence of himself was as 
strongly marked by forbearance as it was by ability. I thought it, 
however, not altogether impossible that before the fate of this elec- 
tion was decided, Mr. Fitzgerald might have been mei'cly practising 
an expedient of wily conciliation, and that when he appeared so 
mock and self-controlled in the midst of a contest wliich would have 
provoked the passions of any ordinary man, he was only stifling hi& 
resentment, in the hope that he might succeed in appeasing the 
violence of the opposition with which he had to contend. But Mr. 
Fitzgerald, in the demeanor which he has preserved to-day, after 
the election has concluded with his defeat, has given proof that his 
gentleness of deportment was not affected and artificial: and, now 
that he has no object to gain, wo cannot but give him as ample 
credit for his sincerity, as we must give him for that persuasive 
gracefulness by wliicli his manners are distinguished. Justly has he 
said that he has not lost a friend in this country ; and he might have 
added tliat, so far from having incurred any diminution of regard 
among those who were attached to him, ho has appeased to a great 
extent the vehemence of that political enmity in which the associate 
of Mr. Peel was not very unnaturally held. But, sir, while I have 
thus made the acknowledgment which was due to Mr. Fitzgerald, 
let me not disguise my own feelings of legitimate, but not I hope 
offensive exultation at tlio result of this great contest, that has 
attracted the attention of the English people be} ond all example. I 
am not mean enough to indulge in any contumelious vaunting over 
one who has sustained his defeat with so honorable a magnanimit}'. 
The victory which has been achieved, has been obtained not so much 
over Mr. Fitzgerald, as over the faction with which I excuse him to 
a great extent for having been allied. A great display of power 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 451 

has been made by the Catholic Association, and that manifestation 
of its influence over the national mind, T regard as not only a very 
remarkable, but a very momentons incident. Let us consider Avhat 
has taken place, in order that we may see this singular political 
phenomenon in its just light. It is right that we attentively survey 
the extraordinary facts before us, in order that we may derive from 
them the moral admonitions which they are calculated to supply. 
What then has happened ? Mr. Fitzgerald was promoted to a place 
in the Duke of Wellington's councils, and the representation of this 
great county became vacant. The Catholic Association determined 
to oppose him, and at first view the undertaking seemed to bo des- 
perate. Not a single Protestant gentleraau could bo procured to 
enter the lists, and in the want of any other candidate, Mr. O'Con- 
nell stood forward on behalf of the people. Mr. Yescy Fitzgerald 
came into the field encompassed with the most signal advantages. 
His father is a gentleman of large estate, and had been long and 
deservedly popular in Ireland. Mr. Fitzgerald himself, inheriting 
a portion of the popular favor with a favorite name, had for twenty 
years been placed in such innnediate contiguity to power, that he 
was enabled to circidate a large portion of the influence of govern- 
ment through this fortunate district. There is scarcely a single 
family of any significance among you, which does not labor under 
Mr. Fitzgerald's obligations. At this moment it is only necessary 
to look at him, with the array of aristocracy beside him, in order to 
perceive upon what a high position for victory he was placed. He 
stands encompassed bj^ the whole gentry of the county of Clare, 
who, as they stood by him in the hour of battle, come here to cover 
his retreat. Almost every gentleman of rank and fortune appears 
as his auxiliary, and the gentry, by their aspect at this instant, as 
well as by their devotedness dui-ing the election, furnish evidence 
that in his person their own cause was to be asserted. To this com- 
bination of favorable circumstances — to the political friend, to the 
accomplished genthmau, to the eloquent advocate, at the head of all 
the patrician opulence of the county, what did we oppose? We 
opposed the power of the Catholic Association, and with that tre- 
mendous engine we have beaten the calnnct minister, and the 
phalanx of aristocracy by which he is surrounded, to the ground. 
Why do I mention these tilings? Is it for the purpose (God forbid 



452 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

that it should !) of wounding the feelings or exasperating the pas- 
sions of any man? No, but in order to exhibit the almost marvel- 
lous incidents which have taken place, in the light in which they 
ought to be regarded, and to present them in all their appalling 
magnitude. Protestants who hear me, gentlemen of the county 
Clare, you whom I address with boldness, perhaps, but certainly not 
with any purpose to give you ofieuce, let me entreat j'our attention. 
A baronet of rank and fortune. Sir Edward O'Brien, has asked 
whether this was a condition of things to be endured ; ho has expa- 
tiated ujoon the extraordinary influence which has been exercised in 
order to effect these signal i-esults ; and, after dwelling upon many 
other grounds of complaint, he has with great force inveighed 
against the severance which we have created between the landlord 
and tenant. Let it not be imagined that I mean to deny that we 
have had recourse to the expedients attributed to us ; on the con- 
trary, I avow it. We have put a great engine into action, and 
applied the entire force of that powerful machinery which the law 
has placed under our control. We are masters of the passions of 
the people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible 
effect. But, sir, do you, or docs any man he're, imagine that we 
could have acquired tliis formidable ability to sunder the strongest 
ties by which the different classes of society are fastened, unless we 
found the materials of excitement in the state of society itself? Do 
you think that Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single 
powers of his own mind, unaided by any external co-operation, 
brought the country to this great crisis of agitation? Mr. O'Con- 
nell, with all his talents for excitation, would have been utterly 
powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied with a great cou- 
sj^irator against the public jieacc : and I will tell you who that 
confederate is^ — it is the law of the land itself tliat has been Mr. 
O'Connell's main associate, and that ought to be denounced as the 
mighty agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression is the wand of 
this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code. Break 
the wand of this political Prospero, and lake from him the volume 
of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his 
control no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration 
which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in 
itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 453 

honor to listen to mc, look, I pniy 3"ou, a little dispassionately at 
the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst yoii. 
I beg of you to put aside your angry feelings for an instant, and 
believe me that I am far from thinking that you have no good 
ground for resentment. It must be most painful to the proprietors 
of this county to be stripped in an instant of all their influence ; to 
be left destitute of all sort of sway over their dependants, and to see 
a few demagogues and priests usurping their natural authority'. This 
feeling of resentment must be aggravated by the consciousness that 
they have not deserved such a return from their tenants ; and as I 
know Sir Edward O'Brien to be a truly benevolent landlord, I can 
well conceive that tlie apparent ingratitude Avith which he was treat- 
ed has added to the pain which ever}^ landlord must experience ; 
and I own that I was not surprised to see tears upon his eyelids, 
while his face was inflamed with the emotions to which it was not 
iu human nature that ho should not give way. But let Sir Edward 
O'Brien and his fcilow-pi'oprietors, who are gathered about him, 
recollect that the facility and promptitude with which the peasantry 
have thrown otT their allegiance, are owing not so much to any want 
of just moral feeling on the part of the people, as to the operation 
of causes for which the people are not to blame. In no other coun- 
try, except in this, would such a revolution have been eflccted. 
Wherefore? Because in no other country are the people divided 
by the law from tlicir superiors, and cast into the hands of a set of 
men who arc supplied with tiie means of national excitement 1)y the 
system of government under which we live. Surely no man can 
believe that such an anomalous body as the Catholic Association 
could exist, excepting in a community which had been alienated 
from the state by the state itself. The discontent and the resent- 
ment of seven millions of the population have generated that domes- 
tic government which sways public opinion and uses the national 
passions as the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impos- 
sible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to 
create any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a 
century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will' be 
empty sound and idle air. But when what they tell the people is 
true — when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are pro- 
duced, of which what has taken place at this election is only an 



454 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

example. The whole body of the people having been previously 
excited, the moment any incident, such as this election, occurs, all 
the popular passions start simultaneously up, and bear down every 
obstacle before them. 

Do not, therefore, lie surprised that the peasantry should throw 
off their allegiance, when they are under the operation of emotions 
which it would be wonderful if they could resist. The feeling by 
which ihey are actuated, would maUe them not only vote against 
their landlord, but w'ouicl make them scale the batteries of a fortress 
and mount the breach ; and, gentlemen, give me leave to ask 3'ou, 
whether, after a due reflection upon the motives by which j-our 
vassals (for so they arc accounted) are governed, you will be dis- 
posed to exercise any measure of severity in their regard. I hear it 
said, that before many days go by, there will be many tears shed in 
the hovels of your slaves, and that you will take a terrible vengeance. 
I trust tliat you will not, when your own passions shall have sub- 
sided, and your blood has had time to cool, persevere in such a 
cruel, and let mo add, such an unjustitiable determination. Consider 
whether a great allowance should not be made for the off"ence which 
they have committed. If they are under the influence of fanaticism, 
such an influence affords many circumstances of extenuation : — you 
should forgive them, "for they know not what they do." They 
have followed their priests to the hustings, and they would follow 
them to the scaff"old. You will ask, wherefore they should prefer 
their priests to their landlords, and have a higher reverence for tho 
altars of their religion, than for the counter in which you calculate 
your rents? Consider a little the relation in which the priest stands 
towards the peasant. I will take for my example an excellent land- 
lord and an excellent priest. The landlord shall be Sir Edward 
O'Brien, and the priest shall be Mr. Murphy of Corofin. Who la 
Sir Edward O'Brien? A gentleman who from tho windows of a 
palace, looks upon possessions almost as wide as those which his 
ancestors beheld from the summit of their feudal towers. His tenants 
pay him their rent twice a year, and have their land at a moderate 
rate. But what are his claims, when put into comparison with those 
of Mr. Murphy of Corofin, to the confidence, to the afTection, and to 
the fidelity of the peasants who are committed to his care ? He is 
not only the minister of that humble altar at which their forefathers 



RICHARD LALOR SHEH.. 455 

and themselves were taught to kneel, but he is their kind, their 
familiar, yet most respected friend. In their diflSculties and dis- 
tresses they have no one else to look to ; he never fails wlien con- 
sulted by them, to associate his sympathy with his admonition ; for 
their sake he is ready to encounter every hazard, and, in the per- 
formance of the perilous duties incident to his sacerdotal office, he 
never hesitates to expose his life. In a stormy night, a knocking is 
heard at the door of the priest of Corofin. He is told that at the 
foot of the mountain a man of guilt and blood has scarcely more than 
an hour to live. Will the teacher of the gospel tarry because of the 
rain and of the wind, and wait until the day shall break, when the 
soul of an expiring sinner can be saved, and the demons that are 
impatient for him can still be scared away? He goes forth in the 
blackness of the tempestuous midnight — he ascends tlie hill, he 
travei'ses the morass — and faint, and cold, and dripping, finds his 
way to the hovel where l.is coming is awaited ; — with what a gasp- 
ing of inarticulate gratitude — with what a smile of agony is he 
welcomed ! No fear of contagion, no di'ead of the exhalations of 
mortality, reeking i'rom the bed of the pestilential man can appal 
him, but kneeling down at the side of the departing culprit, and 
sustaining him in his arms, he receives from lips impregnated with 
death, the whisper with which the heart is unloaded of its mysteries, 
. and, raising up his eyes to heaven, pronounces the ritual of absolu- 
tion in the name of Him of whose conmiission of mercy he is the 
befitting bearer, and wliosc precepts he illustrates in his life and 
inculcates in his example. And can you feel wonder and resentment 
that under the influence of such a man as I have described to you, 
your dependants should have ventured upon a violation of j'our 
mandates? Forgive me if I venture to supplicate, on behalf of your 
tenants, for forbearance. Pardon them, in the name of one who 
will forgive you your offences in the same measure of compassion 
which you will show to the trespasses of those who have sinned 
against yourselves. Do not persecute these poor peofile : don't 
throw their children upon the public road, and send them forth to 
starve, to shiver, and to die. For God's sake, Mr. Fitzgerald, as 
you are a gentleman and a man of honor, interpose your influence 
with j'our friends, and redeem your pledge. I address myself per- 
sonally to you. On the first day of the election you declared that 



456 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

you would deprecate persecution, and that you were the last to wish 
that vindictive measures should be cn)j)io3'ed. I believe j'ou — and 
I call upon yon to redeem that pledge of mercy, to perform that 
great moral promise. You will cover yourself with honor by so 
doing, in the same way that you will share in the ignominy that will 
attend upon any expedients of rigor. Before you leave this country 
to assume your high functions, enjoin your friends with that 
eloquence of which you arc the master, to refrain from cruelty and 
not to oppress their tenants. Tell them, sir, that instead of l)usying- 
themselves hi the worthless occupation of revenge, it is much fitter 
that they should take the political condition of their country into 
their deep consideration. Tell them that they should address them- 
selves to the legislature, and implore a remedy for these frightful 
evils. Tell them to call upon the men, in whose hands the destiny 
of this great empire is placed to adopt a system of peace, and to 
apply to Ireland the great canon of political morality — 2iacis impo- 
iiere inorem. Let it not be imagined that any measure of disfran- 
chisement, that any additional penalty, will aiford a remedy. 
Things have been permitted to advance to a height from which they 
cannot recede. Protestants, awake to a sense of your condition. 
What have you seen during this election? Enough to make you 
feel that it is not a mere local excitation, but that seven millions of 
Iris!) people are completely arrayed and organized. That which you 
behold in Clare, you would bchokl, under similar circumstances, in 
every county in the kingdom. Did you mark our discipline, our 
subordination, our good order, and that tranquillit}", which is for- 
midable indeed? You have seen sixty thousand men imder our 
command, and not a hand was raised, and not a forbidden word was 
uttered in that amazing multitude. You have beheld an example of 
our power in the almost miraculous sobriety of the people. Their 
lips have not touched that infuriating beverage to which they ai'c so 
much attached, and their habitual propensity vanished at our com- 
mand. Is it meet and wise to leave us armed with such a dominion? 
Trust us not with it; strip us of this appalling power; disarray us 
by equality ; instead of angry slaves make us contented citizens : if 
you do not, tremble for the result. 



BICHAKD LALOR SIIEIL. 457 



Repeal of the Union. 

Speech m the House of Co.mjions on the 25Tn of April, 1834. 



^ipHE speech just spoken by the member for the county of Wcx- 
^^ ford has been received with acclamations, and if it were less 
^ able, the acclamation would not, perhaps, have been less cn- 
i thusiastic, or less loud. Foilunate advocate, whose success 

depends as much at least on the predilections of the tribunal, as uj)on 
the merits of the cause ! I have heard my honorable friend when he 
exhiljitcd fully as much eloquence as upon this occasion, but never 
saw him received with such cordiality at the outset, or such rapture 
at the termination of any of his former liarangues. With what clear- 
ness of exposition, with what irresistible force, for example, did he 
demand justice for the Irish people after the massacre of Newtown- 
barry? He presented a picture of that atrocious transaction, com- 
pared to which, his accounts of the fatal effects of agitation are weak 
and inefKcienl indeed. The incidents which he described, and the 
picturesque diction in which his narrative was conveyed, ought to 
have produced a great impression upon his auditory, yet how coldly 
did all that he then m-ged fall upon his hearers. You were then 
frigid and apathetic ; you are now, in the highest degree, susceptiblo 
and alive to the accomplishments of the member for the county of 
"Wexford. My honorable friend is now a devoted and unqualified 
antagonist of repeal. Was it alwa^'s thus ? Did he not say — that 
if justice was not done to Ireland on the titlic question, he should, 
however reluctantly, become an advocate for repeal? 

Mr. Lambert — 1 do not i-ecollect having ever said so. 

Mr. Sheil — At all events, he declared that the denial of justice 
with respect to the Irish Church, would have the effect of inducing 
the great mass of the population to embrace repeal. Whether he 



458 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

spoke of himself, or of the country, putthig personal considerations 
out of view, the inference is neurly the same. He expressed a de- 
sire when he began, that the member for Dublin should be in attend- 
ance while he reviewed his conduct. The wish was gratified. The 
member for Dublin entci-ed the house (which the honorable mcmbei 
for the county of Wexford never would have entered but for the 
member for Dublin), and I own that I did not think that he had any 
cause to wince under the chastisement applied to him by the hon. 
member. But how, after all, are the real merits of this great question 
aifected by these resentful references to incidents which have taken 
place outside this house? Is this the proper field for encounter be- 
tween two honorable gentlemen? The member for the county of 
Wexford may have been wronged ; — language may have been applied 
to him by the member for Dublin with regard to his conduct on the 
Coercion Bill, which deserves condemnation. I regret it; but let 
him bear in mind that the obligation conferred ujDon him by the 
member for Dublin, ought to outweigh every injurj^ Though ho 
has been smitten in the face, let him rcmeml)er that the hand that 
struck him, struck his fetters off. The honorable member for Wex- 
ford has adverted to the remuneration, which the people of Ireland 
have bestowed upon the member for Dublin. He should have con- 
sidered the extent of tlie service, before ho derided the reward. For 
thirty years the member for Dublin has toiled in the cause of Ire- 
land ; he has been mainly instrumental in achieving the liberty of 
his fellow-countrymen ; he has relinquished great emoluments by ab- 
stracting himself from his pi-ofession, and by making a dedication of 
his faculties to the interests of his country : — Ii'eland felt that it be- 
hove her to prove her gratitude for that freedom, which is above all 
price. 

I turn from these painful topics to the subject presented to our 
deliberation. Not a word has yet been said upon the amendment. 

Many may conceive that the original proposition ought lo be re- 
jected, and yet will, I hope, pause before they adopt the sentiments 
contained in the address. The question before the house is, not 
merely whether a committee should be granted for the purpose of 
investigating a question on which the Seci'ctary for the Treasury 
thought it not inexpedient to deliver an harangue, of which the 
length must be admitted to be unsurpassed, but whether we shall 



RICHARD LALOR SEIEIL. 459 

vote an address, which not only contains an approval of the Union, 
but states besides, that the policy adopted with respect to Ireland 
has been judicious, wise, and just. Observe what it is you are 
called upon to place on record ; mark the following paragraph : — 

" We humbly represent to your Majesty that tiio Imperial Parlia- 
ment have taken the aifairs of Ireland into their most serious con- 
sideration, ;md that various salutary laws liavc been enacted since 
the Union for the advancement of the most important interests of 
Ireland, and of the empire at large." 

What other object can there bo for this assertion, but to declare 
that the course pursued by parliament has been such, as not to make 
it requisite that any change should bo adopted. Suppose that in 
the year 1827, Avlien Mr. Canning was Prime jNIinistcr, and so many 
members of the present cabinet were associated with him, the uoIjIc 
lord, ti)o Paymaster of the Forces had introduced the question of 
parliamentary reform, which Mr. Canning declared he would resist, 
— not "to the death," but to the last moment of his life, and that 
the Conservative party had introduced an address against reform 
similar to this address against repeal, would not all the arguments 
advanced in support of tiiis address have applied as forcibly to that 
which I have hypoiiietically suggested? The Conservative address 
against reform might have run thus: — "We, your Majesty's most 
dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons in parliament assembled, 
feel it our duty humbly to approach your Majesty's throne, to re- 
cord, in the most solemn manner, our fixed determination to main- 
tain, unimpaired and undisturljed, the constitution or parliament — 
(I substitute it for 'legislative union'), which we consider to be 
essential to the strength and stability of the empire, to the con- 
tinuance of the connection between the two countries, and to the 
peace, and security and happiness of all classes of your Majesty's 
subjects. In expressing to your Majest}' our resolution to maintain 
the constitution inviolate, we humbly beg leave to assure your 
Majesty, that we shall persevere in applying our best attention to 
the removal of all just causes of complaint, and to the promotion 
of all well-considered measures of improvement." 

Had such an address been proposed, how would it have been 
denounced? Would it not have been considered as amounting to 
a sanction of all the policy pursued by the lioroughmougering ad- 



460 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ministrations? In that light it would, beyond doubt, have been 
represented by that Whig party, which, after having passed their 
political lives in reprobating the conduct of their opponents while 
they were in power, call on the house to pronounce upon the meas- 
ures of the last thirty-four years an unqualified panegyric. I shall, 
in the course of the observations I mean to make, revert to this view 
of the amendment, which I have only suggested, in order that the 
house miglit see exactly what it was called on to do, and the extent 
of the proposition which has been made by the government. I 
return to the original motion. The member for Dublin demands a 
committee to enquire into the results of the Union, and the probable 
consequences of its continuance. I should at once grapple with the' 
argument derived from the alleged likelihood of separation, but that 
it belongs to the prophetic part of the case ; — it is better to deal 
with facts before we indulge in predictions ; and, before we look 
forward, to look back. Before the year 1782, Ireland lay prostrate. 
The foot of England was upon her neck, and was applied with the 
pressure which, in such an attitude, is habitually employed. Why 
do I revert to a period so remote? I call up your ancestors in order 
to show 3'ou that j'ou have preserved a resemblance to them — ia 
the pictures of your predecessors a national likeness may be traced. 
Between an Irish Parliament under the direct control of an English, 
and an Imperial Parliament, in Avhich Irish members are overwhelmed 
by English majorities, tiierc is some distinction, but not much dif- 
ference to be found. Was Ireland justified in demanding her inde- 
pendence? Few will deny it. Yet its advocates were aspersed with 
contumelies as foul as are now poured from high places on the cham- 
pions of repeal. 

The ti-act of Molyneux was burned by order of the British House 
of Commons, and the office was performed by an appropriate repre- 
sentative of the feelings of Englishmen towards the sister country. 
This proposition was treated as a wretched absurdity, or a base ex- 
pedient. It was denounced as impracticable, events converted the 
impossibility into fact. When the Irish Parliament had achieved its 
independence, how did it employ tlic noble instrument which it had 
so gloriously won ? Free trade, the independence of the judges, 
the Habeas Corpus Act, concessions to the Roman Catholics, were 
the measures associated with independence. The Secretary to the 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 461 

Treasury, Mr. Spring Rice, has cited the authorit}'^ of Mr. Grattan, 
-for the purpose of showing that Mr. Grattau condemned the pro- 
ceedings of the Irish Parliament from the year 1782, up to the time 
of the Union. I could cite the authority of Mr. Grattau on the 
other side ; but I will not occupy the time of the house with prolix- 
ities of this sort, nor refer to a multitude of authorities. To one, 
however, I cannot refrain from adverting, that of Edmund Burke, 
because it must weigh beyond every otlier, in the mind of the Secre- 
tary for the Treasury, as Edmund Burke considered England his 
adopted, and (he had good cause to do so) his dearer country. It 
is not wonderful that Edmund Burke should have given a prcfei"cnce 
to England ; "where a man hath his treasure, there also he hath his 
heart." I shall not molest the house with long extracts ; it is enough 
to refer to Edmund Burke's speech on conciliation with America, and 
to his letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, for glowing descriptions of 
the rapid and wide advances made by Ireland after 1782. The 
course adopted by the government is singular, — they tell us in the 
first place, that all reference to events before the Union is inap- 
plicable, and that our encomiums on the Irish Parliament are out of 
place, and afterwards they themselves resort to every petty anecdote 
connected with our parliament, and disinter from oblivion every 
derogatory circumstance, to make out a case against us. The argu- 
ment is this: — the Irish Parliament was often under the influence 
of the populace — its proceedings were interrupted and controlled, 
and therefore it ought not to exist. Might I not say, Cromwell 
broke into this house, bade a rude soldier take away "this bauble" 
on which I now lay my hand, therefore there ought not to be a 
House of Commons ! The reasoning against the Irish Parliament is 
the same. The Secretary for the Treasury has quoted every bad 
act passed by the Irish — he has quoted every good one passed by 
an Imperial Parliament. Whj^ did he omit any — the least — men- 
tion of any one of the benelicial measures enacted by the parliament 
of his country? I shoidd be justified in opening the Irish Statutes, 
and going through the entire of its legislation. But this would be 
a tedious process. To one part only of the legislation of the Irish 
Parliament shall I call the attention of the house. Many a time has 
it been said that the Irish Parliament, left to itself, would never 
carry the Roman Catholic Question. Let us not judge by idle con- 



4G2 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ject-urcs of what it was probable it would have done, but In' a ref- 
erence to what it actually did do. What was the conduct with 
respect to the Roman Catholics of the Irish and the English Parlia- 
ments at the .siiuie time ? The English Parliament made some con- 
cessions, but excluded Roman Catholics from the Universities, from 
corporations, from the Ijench of magisterial justice, from grand 
juries, from petty juries, and from the hustings. What, on the 
other hand, was the conduct of the Irish Parliament? It admitted 
Roman Catholics to the Universities, to corj)orations, to the magiste- 
lial bench, to the grand jury box, to the petty jury, and, above and 
gloriously paramount to all, it conferred upon them the elective 
franchise — furnished a fulcrum by which Ireland placed a mighty 
lever — gave the weapon with which the victory of peace Avas 
achieved — gave that which being conceded, the noble residue of 
freedom could not be withheld. I shall, by and by, have occasion 
to compare the conduct of the Imperial Parliament with that of the 
Irish Parliament, with regard to tlie Catholic Ques.tion. 

We are told that an Irish Parliament would be favorable to sepa- 
ration. The object of the rebellion was separation. How did the 
Irish Parliament act? If it co-operated with the conspirators, or 
connived at their project, there would be some plausibility in the 
suggestion. But not only was there no party with a leaning to the 
insurgents, but there was not a man in that assembly who did not 
concur in the suppression of the revolt ; and it was remarkable that 
the men who were most devoted to Irish independence, were 
equall}' attached to connexion with this country. Never did there 
exist a body which displayed a more genuine and enthusiastic loyal- 
ty ; and shall that great fact be held in no account? France saw in 
the Irish Parliament a representative of the intelligence of Ireland, 
whose moral influence co-operated with military power, and who 
rallied the nation round the standard of the King, by inculcating the 
great principle, that allegiance is but a modification of patriotism, 
and fidelity to our institutions a part of the love of country. Pass 
to the Union. Of the infiimy of the means by which it was carried, 
it is unnecessary to say much because the fact is undisputed. But 
it is said — "of what consequence are the means? Factum valet." 
Convenient aphorism ! By a judicious application of this canon in 
the Machiavelian casuistry, there is no atrocity which may not be 



KICIIARD LALOR SMEIL. 4(33 

turned to account. Lord Grey would not — God forbid! — huvo 
ever robbed Irelund of her legislature, but he has no objection to 
become receiver of her spoliated rights. But let us put the ethics 
of the question, except so far as they are connected with expedi- 
ency, out of the case ; yet have they no connexion with expedi- 
ency? The means have mingled with the effects, because they have 
generated the feelings which would more than vitiate any good 
which the Union could produce. From a source so foul, the Irish 
people think that nothing pure can be derived. They think that no 
matter over what time it may pass, the current can never run clear. 
They look back Avith detestation to the venality and the turpitude 
by which their legislature was bartered — that which is an object of 
national abhorrence must be prolific of manj' evils, and barren of all 
good. Some one said that a fault was worse than a crime ; a crime 
seldom fails to be a fault. The memory of the delinquency makes 
it a mistake. The consideration of the instrumentality by which 
the Union was accomplished is not irrelevant ; but let us consider 
the ,more direct and palpable effects of the measure. They are 
divisible into two heads, — the fiscal and political. The Secretary 
for tiio Treasury has appealed to a great number of financial facts, 
10 sustain the propusition that the Union has produced the pros- 
perity of Ireland. In 1796 Edmund Burke published his letters on 
the Begicide Peace. In one of them, like the Secretary for the 
Treasury, he combines rhetoric and arithmetic together. He refers 
to the exports and imports, to the official returns respecting the 
revenue, the customs, taxes, excise, manufactures, and tonnage and 
all the other materials of fiscal calculation. He concludes that 
nothing is so useful as war, and calls on England to fight on. But 
if the inference of Edmund Burke were wrong, is the inference of 
the member for Cambridge right? Look at Canada. Its prosperity 
may be demonstrated. Why should not Ireland prosper with a 
local government as well as Canada? If you effected a Union with 
Canada, would you not lose the country — would you keep it for 
three years ? 

The Secretary for the Treasury says, that Ireland prospers because 
she enjoys a free trade. In the event of repeal would there not be a 
free trade ? Is it not the interest of both countries that there should 
not be any commercial restrictions? Ireland consumes £7,000,000 



464 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of j'our manufactures — 3"ou consume several millions of her produce. 
How would it be your interest to restrict her trade, when she affords 
3'ou your best, nearest, and safest market? Arc not the people of 
England clamoring for a free trade with France? Would they re- 
fuse it to Ireland ? I deny — (and I know it is the sentiment of the 
great body of my countrymen) — that a, repeal of the Union would 
produce an abolition of the free trade between the two countries. 
Will the Vice-President of the Board of Trade assert that repeal 
ought to lead to a cessation of free trade between Ireland and Eng- 
land, when he n)aintains the utility of free trade with all the world. 
But, then, it is said that, in consequence of the Union, Ireland has 
the exclusive market of England. If that has hitherto been the case, 
how long will you pledge 3'ourselvcs that this advantage shall con- 
tinue? Will you pledge yourselves that the present corn laws shall 
stand? Will the English manufacturer concur in such a pledge? 
and if he will not, what becomes of this argument ? Place the integ- 
rity of the empire in one scale, and a quartern loiif in the other, and 
on which side, in the mind of a political economist, will the pre- 
ponderancy be found? But q,fter all, is it here, in a debate like this, 
that questions so complicated are to be determined? 

Give me leave to ask of those who have heard the honorable 
member for Dublin, and who have listened to the member for Cam- 
bridge, whether the arithmetic of both parties, is not a much fitter 
subject for investigation in a committee, than for discussion, or 
rather retorts, and derisions, and invective, and acclamation here? 
Was Ireland prosperous before the Union ? Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, 
and a crowd of other authorities, have been cited to establish it. 
But it may be said that the antecedent prosperity of Ireland does 
not touch the main question. If so, why did the right honorable 
gentleman think it necessary to advert to it? He has taken from it 
every quality of impertinence, and given it relevancy and value. 
To one prominent point in this part of the case I shall apply myself. 
Indeed, with respect to finance, there is but one observation which 
1 desire to make, and in that I believe myself to be well founded, 
for I am borne out in it by the authority of a gentleman Avho was 
once Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland — Sir John Newport; 
and this opinion is sustained by that of Lord Plunkct. I will not 
troul^le the house by quoting their opinions at length, but I will give 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. ^65 

the substance of them ; and if anyone doul)ts the accuracy of my 
statement, I can produce the passages to which I refer. Ireland, at 
the time of the Union, was charged with the contribution of two- 
seventeenths to the general expenditure of the two kingdoms. Was 
that fair? Sir John Newport pronounced it to be most unjust — so 
did Lord Pluidcet ; but the fact goes further than their authority, 
for it turned out that Ireland was unable to pay the share she had 
contracted to contribute. What was the consequence? It was nec- 
essary to make up the deficiency by successive loans. Where was 
the money borrowed? In England; and thei'evenue of Ireland was 
applied to paying the interest on those loans. How many millions 
were paid by Ireland in consequence of that injustice? Between 
£4,000,000 and £5,000,000 a year up to 1816. You have got so 
much, then, of the i-evenue of Ireland, which you ought nelfcr to 
have received. Has no injustice been done to Ireland in this respect? 
But you will tell me that you have cured all this by the consolidation 
of the exchequers of the two countries. You have not ; because at 
the time of the Union, you agreed that the surplus revenue of Ire- 
land should be spent in Ireland : there would have been a surplus, 
but for the charge of two-seventeenths. You consolidated the ex- 
chequers on account of the excessive charge, and now the whole of 
our revenue comes to your exchequer. By the return, a clear sur- 
plus beyond our expenditure appears ; that surplus you receive. 

You talk of British capital flowing into Ireland — you might as well 
talk of infusing blood into the veins, while you were opening the 
arteries. The Secretary for Ireland saj's absenteeism existed before 
the Union. Yes ; but you have aggravated the disease, and taken 
away the cure. Do you deny that the evil has been augmented? 
The Secretary for the Treasury tells us that Dublin is more pros- 
perous. Hear the report of a committee of this bouse, in 1825 : — 

" Your committee feel an earnest hope that the peculiar situation 
in which the city of Dublin has been placed by the Union will not be 
lost sight of by this house. Prior to that event, ninet3''-eight Peers 
and a proportionate number of wealthy Commoners inhabited the 
same. At present the number of resident Peers does not exceed 
twelve." 

At the present moment there are not more than two.. Ninety-eight 



466 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

resident Peers hefore the Union — :it present two ! The rcjiort of 
committee contains these additional words : — 

"Thus the effect of the Union has been to withdraw from Dublin 
many of those who were liliely to contribute most eti'ectnally to its 
opulence and prosperity." 

The same opinion was expressed by Sir John Newport, on the 
22ud of April, 1822, in a debate in this house, in which the Kigbt 
Honorable Secretary to the Treasury took part. 

"Before the Union (said Sir John) the progress of taxation in 
Ireland had been comp:u-atively moderate, and I am perfectly con- 
vinced that had parliament, since the Union, pursued the course 
which wisdom dictated with respect to this object, it would have 
beei» precisely the reverse of that which they have adopted. It is 
manifest that one of the evils of Ireland, confessedly prominent in 
the list of those under which she suffers, is the magnitude and number 
of her absentee proprietors. By their absence the people are dejirived 
of those to whom they could with confidence look up." 

Is the absence of the nobility and chief gentry of that country of 
no account? I admit that some noblemen, like the Duke of Devon- 
shire, Lords Hertford, Lansdowne, Camden, Fitzwilliam, Es^ex, and 
others, must remain residents in this country. Some arrangement 
might be made b}' an Irish Parliament in their regard ; but the 
necessity of attending the two houses here has caused the aljsence of 
others, whootherwise would live in Ireland . An Irish Parliament would 
tax absenteeism. The Secretary for Ireland, the member for Stafford- 
shire, between whom and the honorable member for Belfast, thei'e 
last night passed an interchange of parliamentary endearments, spoke 
of a tax upon the property of absentees as amounting to confiscation. 
Are the acts of the Irish Parliament void? You would resent a hint 
touching the invalidity of the Act of Union : extend to other acts the 
benefit of your doctrine. We have acts of the Irish Parliament 
(Eichard II. and Henry VIH.), by which the proprietors of estates 
were subject to a heavy forfeiture during their absence. This prin- 
ciple of taxation was adopted by an English Parliament when the 
kings of England had dominions in France, and their sul)jccts 
preferred residence on their estates in that country. Look at the 
inconvenience of the tax on the one hand, and the misery of the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 467 

people of Ireland on the other, and then tell me which ought to 
weigh most in the consideration of the legislature. 

When you expatiate on the increased prosperity of the country as 
proved by its exports, do you forget that when converted into money, 
it is in the palaces, the banquets and saloons of this metropolis, that 
the fruits of Irish labor are expended ? What is the condition of the 
mass of the people? The population of Ireland has doubled since 
the Union. Has her capital increased in the same proportion — and 
is there not a far greater mass of misery than there was before? 
" The greater happiness of the greater number " being applied as a 
test, in what light shall we see the results of the Union to the people, 
the state of the people? The exports of Ireland, forsooth — go — 
let the right honorable gentleman take his stand on the quay of the 
city which he once represented ; let him look on whole fleets 
upon the Shannon, freighted to the water's edge with grain, the 
produce of mja-iads of acres, and with flocks and herds innumerable, 
depastured upon the land on which heaven has rained fertility, and 
after he shall have contemplated the spectacle on which it does the 
heart of an economist good to rest, let him turn round and look on 
the starving peasantry by whom all these materials for absentee 
splendor have been created — behold the fimiine, the wretchedness, 
and the pestilence of the Irish hovel, and if he have the heart to do 
so, let him mock at the calamities of his country, and proceed in his 
demonstration of the prosperity of Ireland. The mass of the people 
are in a condition more wretched than that of any nation in Europe ; 
they are worse housed, worse covered, worse fed than the basest 
boors in the provinces of Russia ; they dwell in habitations to which 
your swine would not be committed ; they are covered with rags 
which your beggars would disdain to wear ; and not only do they 
never taste the flesh of the animals which crowd into your markets, 
and while the sweat drops from their brows, they never touch the 
bread into which their harvests are converted. For you they toil ; 
for you they delve ; they reclaim the bog, and drive the plough to 
the mountain's top for you. And where does all this misery exist? 
In a country teeming with fertility, and stamped with the beneficent 
intents of God. When the famine of Ireland prevailed; whrn her 
cries crossed the channel, and pierced your ears, and reached your 
hearts, the granaries of Ireland were bursting with their contents, 



468 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and wliile a people knelt clown, and stretched out tlicir hands for 
food, the business of deportation, the absentee tribute was going on. 
Talk of the prosperity of Ireland ! Talk of the external magnificence 
of a poorhonse, gorged with misery within. I am glad that I have 
recollected the poor laws. Wherefore are half this house favorable 
to an Irish poor law ! Is it not because the people are i-educed to 
straits at which humanity recoils ? And how does your sympathy 
with the Irish poor at one moment accord with your expatiations on 
Irish prosperity at another? But let me be just. I do not accuse 
the Secretary for the Treasury of being favorable to poor laws. He 
sees the jDoor laws from the Shannon, as he sees repeal from the 
Thames. He takes a ti'easury view of the one, and a Mount Trenchard 
view of the other. We propose repeal — others propose poor laws. 
What does he suggest? What nostrum will he produce from the 
Downing-street dispensary of political empiricism ? All that Ireland 
requires is good government? Has she been well governed? "Yes," 
says the Secretary of the Treasury. I proceed to the political head 
of this great question. 

The right honorable gentleman, on Ihis part of the case has spoken 
with more than his usual talent — which is saying much ; and with 
more than his usual earnestness — which is saying a good deal. He 
designates himself as a West Briton. He does himself injustice, 
for he is more than English. It was said of the English colonist, 
that he was Ilibernis Ilibernior. He improved upon our indigenous 
barbarism. British civilization has produced an opposite i-esult, in a 
proportionate degree of refinement on the mind of the right honor- 
able gentleman. All the mud of his native Shannon has not only 
been washed off by his ablutions in the Cam, but he comes more 
fresh and glossy from the academic water, than those M'ho at their 
birth were immersed in the classic stream. But did the right hon- 
orable gentlemen always see the government of Ireland in the same 
light — or does the configuration, and do the colors of objects depend 
on the position from which they ai'e seen? There was a time when 
the right honorable gentleman saw nothing but gloom in the political 
horizon ; but now every cloud is filled with the radiance of his im- 
agination, and he beholds nothing but brightness,. gorgeousness, and 
gold. He has represented the conduct of the Imperial Parliament 
towards his native country as wise and generous. I shall be able to 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 4(59 

prove from the uniform tenor of the right honorable gentleman's 
speeches in opjiosition, that until he came into office he regarded the 
system by which Ireland was governed as fraught with injustice. 
He has picked from the speeches delivered by the member for 
Dublin every loose expression, every careless phrase which he could 
apply to his purposes. Blame us not if in this, as in other particu- 
lars, we presume to follow your example. Since you rely upon the 
ebullitions of popular excitement at public meetings, and upon those 
thoughtless and inconsiderate, declamations which are thrown off 
in utter recklessness amidst casual gathormgs of the people — since 
you quote after-dinner orators, and rely upon the rhetoric of the 
Corn Exchange ; permit us, on the other hand, to refer to 3'our own 
solemn and reiterated declarations made in your legislative capacity 
in this house, and to exhibit the enormity of the contradiction that 
exists between 3'our conduct in otKce and that which j^ou adopted 
before you arrived at power. How has Ireland been governed since 
the Union? Whigs of 1834 — how have the forebodings of the 
Whigs of 1799 been fulfilled? They foretold the result of that vile 
exchange, that base swap by which Ireland Avas forced to give up the 
entirety of her legislature for a miserable sixth in that imjoerial co- 
partnership, and became dependant upon majorities composed of 
men who care little about the welfare, sympathize less with the feel- 
ings, and know nothing of the interests of Ireland. Let us see the 
evidences of British magnanimity, British generosity, and British 
justice ? The Secretary for the Treasury has gone through a variety 
of details to establish the undeviating beneficence of an Imperial 
Legislature. Hear the language (let him listen to it) uttered by 
himself on the 22d of April, 1822. Thus sjieaks the member for 
Limerick : — 

" What was the first tribute which the Imperial Parliament of 1801 
tendered to Ireland in their first notice of the situation of that 
country after the Union? Their first statute was the Irish JIartial 
Law Bill." 

On Wednesday the right honorable gentleman recapitulated the 
acts which the Imperial Parliament had passed for Ireland. He 
went through acts for lighting and paving the streets — he enlarged 
on the achievements of pure legislation — he recounted the provis- 
ions of various statutes on small subjects — but never once alluded 



470 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to the questions which touch the heart of the country to the core ; 
and entirely forgot that, in 1822, he had exchiimed that the renewal 
of martial law in 1801, was the first piece of legislation adopted by 
the Imperial Pai'liament with respect to Ireland. But I will not do 
him the injustice of suppressing the rest of his observations in that 
remarkable declaration. The right honorable gentlemen went on, 
and said that the spirit in which the British Parliament legislated for 
Ii'eland had been in accordance with the principle on which the act 
establishing martial law was founded. He added — 

"In tracing the histoiy of Irish legislation, both before and since 
the Union, there appeared as it were, two streams passing through 
the channel of Parliament. In one flowed acts of strenuous finance, 
or equally strong coercion — the one with great malice, the other 
with great power. In the other channel the struggle was made, but 
made in vain, to procure an examination into the state and condition 
of the people, in the hope of discovering and applying some remedy 
for their evils." 

Will the right honorable gentlemen give us a corannttee to exiimiue 
into them now ? 

"It was curious," he continued, "in tracing these proceedings, to 
observe with what a singularly felicitous uniformity the channel of 
coercion always flowed, and that of inquiry was always resisted and 
impeded." 

Thus spoke the riglit honorable gentlemen in 1822. Now hear his 
amendment of 1834. See what a metamori^hosis the right honorable 
gentleman has undergone? Peruse the address in which he sets 
forth the wisdom of British Icgishition, and reconcile the member 
for Limerick with the Secretary for the Treasury if 3'OU can. I 
could quote fifty speeches of the right honorable gentlemen of the 
same character, but I have not time ; let us turn from him, and in 
a rapid retrospect, look at the policy pursued by the Imperial Par- 
liament since the Union. Not a mere hint, not an insinuation 
Avhispered by a secretary into the ear of a Catholic peer at the Castle, 
but a pledge was given (the more obligatory because it rested upon 
honor for its fulfillment), that the Union should be followed by 
emancipation. How was that pledge redeemed? What evidence 
was afforded of the liberal and enlightened spirit of the Imperial 
Legislature ? Panegyrists of the Union try it by its fruits, and look 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 471 

to historical notorieties, as well as to treasury calculations. Mr. 
Pitt could not carry the question — he was compelled to resign. 
1801, 1802, 1803 and 1804 passed by. The question was not even 
introduced ; it would have been treated as repeal is to-night. Henry 
Grattau himself did not, until 1805, venture to raise his voice in the 
cause of his country. At length Mr. Fox, in 1805, moved for a 
committee. The proposition was spurned at : the Whigs came in. 
The " no popery " howl is raised — the Catholic question is left to 
the umpirage of a ferocious multitude, and the rights of millions of 
your fellow-subjects are trampled under foot by the infuriated popu- 
lace which Protestantism has summoned to its aid. The Whigs are 
driven from office — not for having proposed emancipation, but for 
having made the huijiblo suggestion that men who shed their blood 
for England, should be capable of honor. The new parliament as- 
sembles. Ireland asked for freedom, and she received the Insurrec- 
tion Act. lu 1812 an ordinance issues, signed " Wellesley Pole," 
from the Castle, and the Catholic committee is dispersed. Mr. 
Saurin tries the Catholic delegates and fails. He mends his hand, 
packs a jury, and procures a conviction. The jury was packed — 
the panel was sent marked and dotted fi'om the Castle. Wiio were 
the loudest to proclaim, and to reprobate the practice by which jus- 
tice was polluted to its source ? The very men who now see nothing 
in the government of Ireland Ijut matter for admiration, and persevei'e 
in the very course whicli they had formerly held up to the execration 
of the country. In 1814, the Insurrection Act is renewed ; the 
Whigs hurled the thunders of their eloquence against it. Would 
that I could here make some pause, in order to lay before the house 
some of those masterpieces of eloquence in which they held up to 
indignation the outrage committed on the constitution. But I must 
hurry on ; seven years go by ; nothing is done for Ireland, aud yet 
all this while there has been a vast majority of Irish members iu 
favor of Catholic emancipation. Their remonstrances, their en- 
treaties for justice were spurned and derided. By whom was Ireland 
oppressed and degraded? By whom was the penal system (the 
parent of such a brood of evil) maintained? Englishmen, by you ! 
and yet, in the face of these facts, an Irishman asks you to pronounce 
a retrospective panegyric upon the fanaticism by which the measures 
of thirty years were distinguished. In 1821, George the Fourth 



472 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

goes to Ireland ; in our loysilty he finds evidence of our felicity. In 
1822, Lord Wellesle}' (the present vicero}') recommends the renewal 
of the Insnrrecti(m Act. It was consistent to send him to administer 
the coercive bill. No one was more prominent than the Secretary 
for the Treasury in reprobating the principles on which that uncon- 
stitutional proceeding was founded. In 1824, the Insurrection Act 
was again renewed, and again the Whigs declaimed and stormed. 
In the interval the Catholic Association was created. By whom? 
Not by the Catholic gentry — not by the men who denounce repeal 
and repealers — but, with the aid of the jDeople, by a man, who, 
whatever estimate may be formed of this question in this house, has 
done great things ; has written his name in ineffaceal)le permanence 
in the records of his country, and built himself on the liberty of 
Ireland a monument which will never fall. 

The agitation and organization of Ireland proceeded. In 1825 the 
Catholic delegates arrived in London. How many of the evils that 
have since arisen might have been prevented if fhe terms which were 
tendered by Ireland had not been rejected. Mr. Canning' comes 
into ofSce, gives up Catholic emancipation, and is denounced for 
apostacy by Lord Grey. Why did Mr. Caiuiing give up that measure ? 
Was it from any renegade spirit? It was because he knew it was 
hopeless to attempt to carry the question in the Imperial Parliament, 
"which has passed," according to the- Secretary of the Treasury, 
"so man}' salutary and beneficial measures for the people of Ireland." 
We were as much at your mercy then as Ave were before 1782. The 
prejndices of England were insuperable. The Goderich Adminis- 
tration, Lansdowne, Herries & Co., succeeded Canning. It died 
in its cradle. At length — (there was one Arthur Wellesley, 
member for Trim, in the Irish House of Commons, who asserted the 
necessity of emancipation in 1793) — at length the Didve of Wel- 
lington consummated in the cabinet that renown which he had ob- 
tained in the field, and, with the aid of a man who did incalculable 
services by inestimable sacrifices, gave freedom to 7,000,000 of his 
fellow-citizens ; but with what injustice was it accompanied? The 
Irish Parliament bestowed upon the forty-shilling freeholders of Ire- 
land the elective franchise. It remained for the Imperial Parliament 
to deprive them of the right. This proceeding was denounced as 
spoliation. By Avhom? By Lord Brougham, by Lord Grey — the 



RICHARD" LALOR SHEIL. 473 

men who would not commit the robbery, but who, when the Kef(n-m 
Bill came on, refused restitution. Are not these facts? Have I 
said a word that is not the fact ? And to all this what does the 
Secretary for the Treasury reply? At the end of almost every 
fourth sentence in one part of his speech (I was surprised, knowing 
his command of language and the copiousness of his vocabulary,) 
the right honorable gentleman exclaimed " nonsense ;" then he cried 
out "trash," and afterwards "stuff." Ah, sir, there is in this mel- 
ancholy detail, truth, dismal, disastrous truth. Your delay of eman- 
cipation was fatal. If you had passed the Catholic Relief Bill years 
before, none of the results M'hich you so much lament would have 
been produced. You were wrong ; you know it, and yqt I scarce 
condemn you for it. I blame the Union, which left the people of 
Ireland at the mercy of the fanatical passions by which the legisla- 
ture was controlled. But the Secretary for the Treasury exclaims,. 
"If the agitators Avould I)ut let us alone, and allow Ireland to be 
tranquil." The agitators, forsooth ! Does he venture — has he the 
intrepidity to speak thus? Agitators! Against deep potations let 
the drunkard rail ; at Crockford's let there be homilies against the 
dice box ; let every liljcrtine lament the progress of licentiousness 
when his Majesty's ministers deplore the influence of demagogues 
and Whigs complain of agitation. 

How did you carry Reform ? Was it not by impelling the people 
almost to the verge of revolution ? Was there a stimulant for their 
passions — was there a provocative for their excitement, to which you 
did not resort? If you have forgotten, do you think that we shall 
fail to remember your meetings at Edinburgh, at Paisley, at Man- 
chester, at Birmingham? Did not 300,000 men assemble? Did 
they not pass resolutions against taxes? Did they not threaten to 
march on London ? Did not two of the cabinet ministers indite to 
them epistles of gratitude and of admiration? and do they now dare, 
have they the audacity, to speak of agitation? Have we not as 
good a title to demand the restitution of our parliament as the min- 
isters to insist on the reform of this house? Wherefore should we 
not adopt the same means to efiect it ? The member for the county 
of Wexford has had the imprudence to talk of Catholic bishops be- 
ing treated with disrespect, and of excesses committed by the popu- 
lace. Bishops ! What, is it only in Ireland that it is a crime to 



474 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

assail a bishop ? Aud have the flames of Bristol left no reflection 
behind ? 

I have demonstrated that at least for twenty-nine years Ireland 
was misgoverned. Twenty-nine years of agitation, aud at length 
justice was extorted from an Imperial Parliament ! But since eman- 
cipation, since the Whigs have come into oiEce, has all gone well? 
Let us pass over some smaller details — the Alms Bill, the juiy pack- 
ing, the exclusion of Catholics on tithe questions, the infusion of 
theology into the police ; let us go to great and essential incidents. 
I shall dwell on no more than three. In your Reform Bill you 
adopted population as a standard here ; you did not employ it in 
Ireland. You gave Wales, with 800,000 people, three additional 
representatives, eight to Scotland with 2,500,000, and five to Ire- 
land with her 8,000,000. You did not restore the forty-shilling 
freeholders. You have left towns in Ireland with 12,000 people 
without a representative ; and you have left your paltry boroughs 
here. It was either necessary, or it was not, to pass your Coercion 
Bill. It was either necessary, or it was not, for the opponents of 
the Insurrection Act to put upon the statute-book a precedent for 
tyranny, and to supersede the tribunals of the country with the leg- 
islation of the Horse-Guards and the judicature of the barrack- 
yard. If it was unnecessary, it was detestable and atrocious ; and 
if it was necessary for Lord Grey to introduce a bill which passed 
■without dissent in the Lords, and which thei-e were men who sup- 
port ministers who declared that they would rather die than support 
it in that shape ; if that was necessary, by whom was the necessity 
created? You have had Ireland for thirty-three years under your 
rule ; j^ou have been her absolute and undisputed masters ; and if 
her condition be deplorable, if atrocities have been perpetrated 
■which call for rigorous laws, are you not respgnsible for this disas- 
trous state of things — and to you, and to your Union, which 
armed you with power unlimited for good or evil, is it not to be re- 
ferred? So much for your coercive measiu'e ; but for its severity 
you made up (did you not?) by your Tithe and Church Bills, your 
147th clause, and those absurd and cruel experiments — absurd in 
theory and cruel in result — with which you have endeavored to 
reconcile that most monstrous of all anomalies — a church of one 
religion and almost an entire nation of another. 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 475 

I turn to the member for Paisley, and other Scotchmen who 
appeal to the results of the Scotch Union. Was such an article, as 
the fifth article of the Act of Union, giving eternity to the Protestant 
Church, among the terms on which Scotland gave up her legislature? 
If any attempt had been made to establish episcopacy by her Union, 
if a mitred pontificate had been inflicted upon her, what would have 
been the consequences ? She would not have for a moment endured 
it. Her people would have risen almost to a man against such a 
Union — to the death they would have resisted it — the country 
would have been deluged in blood. And if at last England and 
e23iscopacy had prevailed, they must have reared their altars in a 
desert, for Scotland would have left them nothing but a wilderness 
for their worship. 

I cannot sit down without adverting to two points : first, the pro- 
bable constitution of an Irish Parliament ; sccondl}', the likelihood 
of separation. As to the first, let the Whigs recollect that, on the 
Eeform question, it was urged that this house would be filled by 
men of an inferior station. It was answered, property must prevail ; 
wherefore should it not prevail in Ireland as well as here ? Is it not 
manifest that, in a little while after the repeal had been carried, the 
Irish nation Avould follow the example of all other nations, and select 
men of influence, from fortune or talents (which give a higher title 
to respect), as the depositaries of the legislative trust? The qualifi- 
cation of the Irish voter (£10 a-year rent) , ought surely to secure a 
highly respectable representation. Besides, observe that if the evil 
is to take place after repeal, it must take place without it. If Ire- 
land would then return 300 unworthj' men, she will retui-n 105 of 
the same character ; and thus j'ou entail on j^ourselves as great an 
evil as that which you apprehend as a consequence of repeal. The 
arguments which are urged against r-epeal, were the very same as 
those which were pressed by Conservatives against reform. They 
said that a collision would take place between Lords and Commons, 
and saw as many calamities in that collision, as you foresee in the 
anticipated disagreements of the Irish and English Parliaments. No 
man pointed out these consequences with more force than Mr. Can- 
ning — an authority which the noble lord the Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs, and the President of the Board of Control, once held in some 
regard. But was Lord Grey terrified l)y the phantom of revolution ? 



47G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Why should he cxi)cct thut \vc should l)c dismayed by another 
spectre, which was as huge and hideous in 1800, wiien he looked at 
it without dismay. Is the argument more valid now than it was 
then ? It is built on this abstract proposition ; two parliaments can- 
not amicably co-exist. lie then said they could. He was not a 
beardless politician at that epoch ; he had already proposed his great 
plan of Iveform; he was about the ago of the Secretary for the Colo- 
nics ; had reached the ago of discretion, and ii;id passed the period 
at which men might bo led away by a juvenile enthusiasm, when the 
understanding may be obscured by the mists which arise from the 
boiling emotions of the heart. Lord Grey's assertion is as valid as 
it was thirty-four years ago ; it is one of those propositions which 
time cannot impair. 

What was then a soj)hism cannot grow iiilo a reason, as into a 
sophism a reason cannot degenerate. Let it be borne in your minds 
that although some of the arguments against a union were founded 
on temporary and transient circumstances, yet others (like that 
grounded on the fear of separation) were permanent, and ai-e now 
just as good as they were a quarter of a century ago. The authority 
of nunket and Bushe, and Saurin, and, above all, the autiiority of 
Grattan, is as powerful as it ever was. The Secretary for the 
Treasury insists that Grattan had changed his mind. His son has 
proved the contrary. He read his answer in 1810, declaring that he 
desired the restoration of the Irish Parliament. To what document 
W'as that answer a response? To Hfi address from the grand juries 
of Dublin, in which they describe the evils of the Union, and call on 
Mr. Grattan to employ his great faculties in accomplishing its repeal. 
Mr. Grattan did not change his mind. But what is the crime of the 
repealers? This — that tiiey consider Lord Grey a good statesman, 
when he is old, but a better i)i-ophet when he was young. I blame 
him not for having altered his opinion ; but I own myself to be sur- 
prised that he should lavish in the speeches, for the utterance of 
which he avails himself of the royal enunciation, such unqualified 
and almost contumelious condemnation of those with Avhom he 
strenuously coincided when he was upwards of thirty years of age. 
But have we no better argument than that which Lord Grey so often 
urged against Mr. Pitt, when he reproached him with a desertion of 
his former opinions. How stands history? It is asked, wiicn did 



KICIIARD LALOR SIIEIL. 477 

two pai'liumeiits long co-exist in friendship? Sliow mo an instance 
in which 8,000,000 of people in one island submitted to a parliament 
held in another, and containing such proportions as exist in this 
assembly. The case of America is obvious ; but look to two strong 
instances — Sweden and Norway have one king and two parliaments. 
Since the year 1815, there has been no quarrel between the legisla- 
tures. Turn to Belgium. Does not the example bear us out? 
Hear an extract from the declaration of Belgi;m independence. 
After alleging that the Union was obtained by fraud, the document 
goes on and states that — 

"An enormous debt and expenditure, the onl}^ portion which Hol- 
land brought to us at the time of our deplorable Union — taxes 
overwhelming by their amount — laws always voted by the Dutch 
for Holland only (and always against Belgium), represented so un- 
equally in the States-General — the seat of all important establish- 
ments fixed in Holland — the most ofFcnsive partialities in the dis- 
tribution of civil and military employments — in a word, Belgium 
treated as a conquered province, as a colony : everything rendei'ed 
a revolution inevitable." 

Do you mark this ? You were instrumental in effecting the Union 
of Belgium and Holland. Lord Castlereagh, who carried the Irish 
Union, represented you at the Congress in which the diffei'ent ar- 
rangements with respect to Belgium and Holland were made. You 
have yourselves recently been parties to that separation which Bel- 
gium demanded, and you assented to the grounds on which it was 
required. All the public establishments removed to Holland ! 
What has become of our Custom House, of our Stamp OfHcc? Our 
Royal Hospital too, built by a contribution made among the Irish 
soldiers, raised out of a sixpence which they joyfully gave to provide 
for them an asylum, that institution, connected with our national 
pride, associated with our best feelings of country, you, for the sake 
of some miserable saving, have determined to annihilate. Take 
warning — you have made experiments enough. Be taught not by 
the failures of others, but by your own. Go on as you have hitherto 
IDrocecded, and you will soon find the entire of Ireland united for 
repeal. A reference has been made to the small number of signa- 
tures to petitions. If there shall be a million next year, what will 
you say? "VVe are told that the Irish people do not desire repeal. 



478 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Are thirty-eight Irish membei-s out of one hundred and five nothing? 
What other test do you demand ? The hist election ought to exhibit 
the truth. The last election verified the prediction which I made to 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer : I went to him when the Tithe Bill 
was pending in 1832, — I told him what would happen. I exclaimed, 
"You are on the eve of a general election; you are driving the 
Irish to fury by your tithe measures, and the result will be, that on 
every hustings in the south, the standard of repeal will be planted." 
It is said that the gentry are against repeal. How fast do the gentry 
of every country fall into the mass of the peoijle ! They desert one 
by one, and the moment it is their interest, they combine with the 
class once designated as the multitude. How soon the populace be- 
comes the people ! Let a few years go by, Catholic and Protestant 
will be reconciled — the national mind will become one mass of hot 
emotion — the same disregard for the interests and feelings of Ire- 
land will be displayed in this assembly ; and, if there should be an 
outbreak of popular commotion here — if the prediction of tlie Con- 
servatives should be fulfilled — and if your alliance with France, 
which is as unstable as its dynasty, should give way, you may have 
cause to lament, when lamentation will be unavailing, that to seven 
millions of Irishmen justice was refused. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 479 



Orange Lodges, 

Speech in the House oe Commons, August 11, 1835. 



ST is remarkable that the gallant colonel (Verner), the Deputy 
^^ Grand Master of Ireland and Viceroy to the Duke of Cumber- 
f^v* berlaud, has not stated that he was ignorant of the existence of 
4 Orange lodges in the army. This omission is the more deserv- 
ing of notice, because he was colonel of the 7th dragoons — because 
he was examined twice before the committee — and because the sev- 
eral other functionaries of the Orange body have declared their utter 
ignorance of that which they ought to have known so well. Inde- 
pendently of these considerations, it appears b^ a report of the pro- 
ceedings of the English Grand Lodge, that the gallant colonel was 
present when (the Duke of Cumberland being in the chair) a reso- 
lution respecting the establishment of Orange lodges in the army was 
moved. Is it true that he was present? 

Colonel Verner. — I was never asked, in the committee, whether 
I knew of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. I now declare 
that I was utterly ignorant of the fact ; and I do not remember 
whether I was or was not present when the resolution, to which the 
honorable gentleman adverts, was carried in the English Grand 
Lodge. 

Mr. Shell. — How far the answer fits the question let the house 
judge. It appears that the gallant colonel did attend the English 
Grand Lodge, on what occasion he does not distinctly recollect — 
his memory is misty — but it would be important that he should state 
how far the impression is correct, that Orange lodges have been 
established in the army with the sanction of the Duke of Cumberland, 
and by virtue of resolutions, passed when the Orange Grand Lodge 
was graced by the presence of his Royal Highness ! I turn from the 



480 TREASURY OF ELOQUEXCE. 

gallant colonel to the general question. At the commencement of 
the session I charged the Conservative government with having 
advanced Orangemen to places of high station, and having given to 
Orange lodges answers amounting to a recognition of their public 
usefulness. This motion was not unattended with a salutary effect; 
immediately after the member, for Kilkenny,* to whom the country 
is greatly indebted for the disclosures which he has been instrumental 
in producing, moved the appointment of the committee. On that 
committee the leading functionaries of the Orange body were placed. 
And yet it is said that the committee was packed ; but let us see who 
wei-e the membei's of it: — the honorable members for Siigo and 
for Cavan wei'e upon it; and there were also Mr. Jackson, Mr. 
Wilson Patten — I suppose that he is a Conservative — Colonel 
Wood, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Nicholl, Sir James Graham — (I really 
do not know with which party to class him) — Colonel Conolly and 
Colonel Perceval. I do not think that this selection can lie said 
to be an unfair one, but it is alleged that the mode in which the 
witnesses were examined was unjust. The Grand Master, and the 
Grand Treasurer, and the Grand Secretary were examined — (they 
are all Grand) — the order of investigation was altogether inverted, 
and the Orange party were allowed to open the case themselves, and 
for a number of days none but Orange witnesses were examined. 
Colonel Verner was twice examined — first on the 7th of April, 1835, 
and again on the 9th of April. Then came the Reverend Mortimer 
O'Sullivan — certainly a very competent witness to give evidence 
with respect to both religions, for with regaixl to one he could in- 
dulge in the "Pleasures of Memory," and to the other, he, doubtless, 
looked with the "Pleasures of Hope;" Mr. M. O'Sullivan, the 
Grand Chaplain, was produced, and was examined on the 13th of 
April, on the 21st and 2Gth of jNIay, and again on the 27th of May: 
so many days expended upon theology and the Reverend Mortimer 
O'Sullivan. Then came Mr. Swan, the Deputy Grand Secretary; 
next came Mr. Stewart Blacker, the Assistnnt Grand Treasurer, who 
was examined on the 8th, 10th, I2th, and loth, of June ; next Mr. W. 
Ward, the solicitor of the Orange body, who was produced to show 
that they never in any way interfered with the administration of jus- 
tice ; then again, on the 15th of June came Mr. Mortimer O'Sullivan 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 481 

— ecce iferum Ovisjnnuf^-' — and lastly came ]\Ir. Hugh Baker. Yet 
it is alleged that there was unfair dealing in the examination of wit- 
nesses, although every word of the resolutions of the honourable 
member for Middlesex is founded, not upon the testimony of a 
party adverse to Orangeism, but upon the testimony of Orangemen 
supported by the journals and the records they themselves produced. 
What appears to be the state of Ireland in reference to the Oranse 
institution, from the evidence adduced by Orangemen themselves? 
A confederacy exists, exclusively sectarian. It consists of 150,000 
men ; the members are initiated with a solemn and mysterious ritual 
— they enter into a compact of religious and political brotherhood 

— signs and pass-words are employed by them for the purposes of 
clandestine recognition — their jjroceedings are regulated by a code 
of laws, the most specific and the most minute — they are governed 
by a great representative assembly called the Grand Lodge of Ireland, 
consisting of delegates from every part of Ireland — the whole coun- 
try is divided into departments, in which lodges aiEliated and corre- 
sponding to each other are established — and this enormous mass of 
organized Protestantism is in arms, while a Prince of the Blood, not 
next but near the throne, is at its head ! 

How has this unparalleled institution woi-ked ? Let us enquire what 
has been its effect with respect to the administration of justice and 
the peace of the country, and ask how has it been employed as a 
political engine for the purpose of persecution, and under what cir- 
cumstances and with what cognizance it has extended itself into the 
army? The Orange Grand Lodge have defended a series of prose- 
cutions instituted against the members of this turbulent fraternity, 
by the crown. An Orangeman, in the streets of Dundalk, strikes a 
Roman Catholic dead : he is prosecuted by the crown, convicted of 
manslaughter, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. His 
defence was conducted by the Orange body, and the Orange lodges 
came to a resolution to support him. Certain Orange rioters at 
Newry were sentenced to sixteen months' imprisonment by a Prot- 
estant magistrate ; to these malefactors the Grand Orange Lodge 
extended their pecuniary aid, and they conducted their defence. 
They not only defended but prosecuted. Three magistrates in 
Cavan dispersed an Orange procession ; the Grand Orange Lodge 
determined to institute a prosecution against the civil authorities 



482 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

who had the audacity to interfere with them ; thc\' sent down to 
Cavan their solicitor, and the grand jur}' threw out the bills. At 
the last Meath election a body of 200 Orangemen, gathered from the 
adjacent counties, entered the town of Trim. They fill the Court- 
house ; a dagger is seized in the hand of one of them by the High 
Sheriff; they spread confusion and dismay, and after having enacted 
their part, return to the town of Kells. Here they meet a Roman 
Catholic, and put him to death ; they are jirosecuted, and the Grand 
Orange Lodge, by a specific resolution, advances money to conduct 
the defence. An Orangeman is indicted ; in the jurors' box twelve 
Orangemen are placed ; the magistrates, if the case be tried at 
quarter sessions, are members of this fatal fraternity ; under these 
circumstances, what a mockery is the administration of justice ! Sir 
Frederick Stovin speaks of it as a subject of public ridicule and con- 
tempt. But fticts are better than opinions. Take the following : — 
In a prayer-book a notice of Oi'ange assassination is written ; Sir 
Frederick Stovin and his subordinate, Duff, who was employed in 
the police, had incurred the displeasure of the Orangemen of Tyrone, 
and in the praj^er-book belonging to the wife of Mr. Dnif — left in 
the church that she had been in the habit of attending — an Orange 
notice, threatening death to Sir Frederick Stovin and to her husband, 
is written. Almost immediately after a meeting is called at Dun- 
gannon at which the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Tyrone at- 
tends, and the Orangemen appear in considerable force, with military 
music, and invested with their factious decorations. A scene of 
excitement ensues — shots are discharged — a musket is levelled at 
Sir Frederick Stovin, and the ball whistles at his ear ; and all this 
occurs in the pacific province of Ulster. 

What, the house will ask — atrocious as the circumstances may 
appear — what has all this to do with the administration of justice? 
At that meeting, attended with so many incidents of a revolting 
character. Lord Claude Hamilton was made an Orangeman — he was 
initiated at the house of a publican of the name of Lilburne ; and 
immediately afterwards he was made a magistrate. In this state of 
things, what other feeling but one of dismay amongst Roman 
Catholics, and one of impunity can exist amongst the Orange popu- 
lation of the country ? I appeal to a fiict again : At the last spring 
assizes for the county of Armagh, three Orangemen were prosecuted 



RK^HARD LALOR SHEIL. 483 

for marching in a procession. Baron PenneMhcr suggested to them, 
with a view to a mitigation of their sentence, that they ought to 
express regret for having violated the law. Did they intimate their 
contrition? Did they declare their determination never to commit a 
similar outrage on the public peace again ? In open court, and in 
the face of the judge, these audacious confederates whistled an air, 
called " The Protestant Boys." And what was the course taken by 
indignant justice? — what, do you conjecture, was their sentence? 
Not two years' imprisonment — not one year — not six months. 
The learned judge tempers justice with mercy, and sentences these 
presumptuous delinquents to an imprisonment of three weeks. The 
Dorchester laborers wei-e sentenced to transportation for seven yeare, 
and the Orange malefactors to an imprisonment for three weeks- 
But how has the Orange Society affected the peace of the country?' 
We are told that Ulster is in a state of profound and prosperous^ 
repose; but by the evidence, what appears? In the broad day, on: 
the 17th of January last, a body of Orange incendiaries enter a. 
Eoman Catholic village, called Anagagh, and, in the fiice of the noon- 
tide sun, set fire to the houses of the Roman Catholic inhabitants; 
they then retire to a hill called Pinigo, to the number of near 200, 
form themselves in military array — Sir Frederick Stovin advances 
at the head of the militar}^ with a piece of artillery, in order to dis- 
perse them — the magistrate, by whom he is attended, declines giving 
an order to fire — and the Orangemen, in martial order, and with 
martial music, bidding and looking defiance, march away. And how 
are they armed ? With yeomanry muskets. The entire yeomanry 
force of Ireland is, in fact, eni'oUed in the Orange associations, and 
when a conflict ensues with the people the consequences are easily 
foreseen :' witness the slaughters of which they have been guilty, the 
blood in which they have waded, the horrors which they have perpe- 
trated : witness Newtownbarry ! How has the Orange institution 
been employed as apolitical engine? To their declaration of alle- 
giance a condition is attached. They engage to maintain the throne, 
so long as by the throne Pi'otestant ascendancy is supported. They 
expel from their society every member who does not comply with 
their ordinances at elections. They issue proclamations commanding 
every Orangeman to jjetition pai-liament for or against specific meas- 
ures — and the}^ are armed with what must be considered formidable 



484 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

instruments of supplication. At the close of the last year it was 
determined by a cabal that Lord Melbourne should be driven from 
office. At Hillsborough 75,000 Orangemen are assembled to sustain 
the Conservative adventurers in their daring and desperate enter- 
prise, and to prove that tiiey are not the remnant of a despicable 
faction. But will it be said, "Had they not a right to all this? 
Had they not the advice of the king to speak out? Had they 
not a right to petition parliament, and address the crown at 
Hillsborough?" Be it so. Granting them their prerogative at 
Hillsborough, what have they to do with Quebec? The house seems 
startled with the question. It is readily explained. The Orangemen 
of Ireland have passed resolutions for the extension of their society 
into Upper and Lower Canada. The Grand Lodge of England have 
appointed a Grand Secretary to visit the British colonies of North 
America, with directions to communicate with the Grand Master. 
Why is this ? Upon what pretence ? For what purpose ? Is their 
object defensive? What, in God's name, have the Irish or English 
Orangemen to do with Lower Canada, whose religion is Catholic, 
whose established church is Catholic, whose legislature is Catholic — 
for eighteen out of twenty of the inhabitants are Catholics ? Are 
they not contented with striking the baneful roots of their confed- 
eracy into the heart of the British empire, but they must extend 
ramifications across the Atlantic, in order to supply the Xorth Ameri- 
can colonies with their poisoned fruits ? 

I come to the army, the most important topic. This loyal brother- 
hood, the guardian of peace, the promoter of tranquilit}^ despite of 
the notorious rules of the Horse Guards, and in violation of every 
principle of military discipline, have introduced into the army its 
secret, its factious and mutinous organization? The fact is beyond 
all dispute ; but there ai-e circumstances connected with it, which are 
not a little remarkable. There is, in the code of Orange legislation, 
an ordinance that all regiments in the army shall be considered as 
districts. It is the 1.5th rule of 1824. So late as this very year in 
the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, a warrant was granted to 
create a lodge in the army ; and who was in the chair : j\Ir. Crome- 
lin, the Grand Master of the county of Down. This resolution and 
the presidency of Mr. Cromelin on the occasion, appear in the appen- 
dix to the report. But let the house mark the following resolution. 



RirilARD LALOR SIIEIL. 485 

" That the next warrant should be granted to the 66th Regiment." 
Who was it moved that resolution? No ordinary individual — a 
man, holding, in the Orange body, the highest position, but who 
began his political life as a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, (of 
which the Duke of Cumberland is chancellor) , who has since figured 
in Brunswick clubs, and has exhibited, on various occasions, at pub- 
lic meetings in England, — the Rev. Charles Boytou, the associate 
of Mr. Mortimer O'Sullivan, the Grand Chaplain of the Orange 
Grand Lodges, and — mark it ! — the Chaplain to the Earl of Had- 
dington, the late Lord Lieutenant. But all the functionaries of the 
Orange body, despite all this, were ignorant of what was going on 
in the army. The knowledge of some people is wonderful ; but not 
half so marvellous as the ignorance of others. The next time the 
honorable gentleman opposite, the Grand Treasurer, late Treasurer 
to the Ordinance, who was admitted, with the Duke of Wellington, 
a doctor of common law at Oxford, visits that learned and loyal 
establishment, I pray of him to revive the old college play of " Igno- 
ramus ; " the principal characters to be performed hy Alexander 
Perceval, Henry Maxwell, and His Royal Highness the Duke of 
Cumberland. His Royal Highness has written a letter. He never 
heard of Orange lodges in the army — never heard of the orders of 
1822 and 1829 — of the rule of the Orange body, that every regi- 
ment shovild be considered a district — of the majority of the Grand 
Lodge having carried a i-esolution, on a division, to establish 
Orange lodges in the army — of the printed book of warrants, in 
which the list of military warrants is contained ; — neither does his 
Royal Highness recollect having been present when, in 1831, 1832, 
1833 and 1835, warrants were granted, M'hilst he was in the chair, to 
military men, and actually a soldier attended as representative of his 
regiment. His Royal Highness does not bear all this in mind, and 
is utterly ignorant of the introduction into the army, of the lodges 
of which he is the Grand Master. Heaven forbid that I should ques- 
tion the truth of his Royal Highness's allegation ; I fly in the midst 
of difficulties, which might startle the lielief of men of less accommo- 
dating credulity than mine. Credo quia impofisible est. But, Sir, 
there is a consideration of infinite importance connected with his 
Ro3'al Highness, and independent of his knowledge or his ignorance. 
Is it befitting that any British sulycct should possess the power of 



486 TREASURY OF ELOQUEJTCE. 

which he has made himself the master ? Is it safe that a priuce of 
the blood should be invested with this portentous authority? He 
is declared, by the rules of the English Grand Lodge, to be absolute 
and uncontrollable : he is addressed with a sj^ecies of prophetic greet- 
ing — "Hail, that shall be king hereafter ! " an aphorism of theology. 
If that prediction shall be veriiied ; if, by some fatality, England 
shall be deprived of the princess who is the object of her aflfection 
and of her hope — that princess who, if maternal virtues be here- 
ditary, must be wise, and gentle and good — if. Sir, the Imperial 
Grand Master be fated to be the Sovereign of this vast empire, I trust 
that by 100,000 Irish Janissaries the throne of Ernest the First will 
never be surrounded ! 

One, and the most important, of all questions, remains. What 
are the house and the government to do under the existing facts of 
the case? That something must be done, is manifest. You cannot 
tolerate this institution. If you do what will be the result? How 
will the Eoman Catholic soldiers feel, with whom your army is filled, 
who have fought your battles, participated in j'our glory, and fur- 
nished the raw material out of which the standard of victory has 
been wrought? If, by your connivance, you convert this confeder- 
acy into a pattern, and if a counter organization shall be formed — 
if we, the Irish millions, shall enrol ourselves in some analogous 
organization, if its members shall be admitted with a solemn religious 
ceremony, if the obligation of a political fraternity shall be inculcated, 
if signs, and tests, and pass-words shall be employed, if a represen- 
tative assembly, consisting of deputies from every Irish county shall 
be held in the metropolis, and subordinate lodges shall be held in 
every department into which the country shall be subdivided, what 
will befall? To the vanquished, and to the victors — woe! The 
gulf of civil warfare will yawn beneath the feet of Ireland, and in the 
abyss all her hopes will be swallowed. Avert, avert the calamity, 
which, if I have anticipated, it is only to shudder at its prospects. 
Save us from these terrible possibilities ! Adopt a measure which, 
by its timely application, may prevent these terrific results from 
coming to pass. If I relied upon them less, I should warn them 
more. I will not tell them that I expect — I know — that they will 
do their duty. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 487 



Irish Municipal Bill 

Speech in the House of Cojoions, February 22, 1837. 



^p|HE right honorable bai-onet (Sir James Graham) began the 
^^ speech, in many particurars remarkable, which he has just 
A^ concluded amidst the applauses of those, whose approbation, 
H fit one period of his political life, he would have blushed to 

incur, by intimating that he was regarded as a " bigot " on this side 
of the house. Whether he deserves the appellation by which he 
has informed us that he is designated, his speech to-night affords 
some means of determining. I will not call him a bigot, I am not 
disposed to use an expression in any degree oflensive to the right 
honorable baronet, but I will presume to call him a convert, who 
exhibits all the zeal for which conversion is proverbially conspicuous. 
Of that zeal we have manifestations in his references to pamphlets 
about Spain, in his allusions to the mother of Cabrera, in his remarks 
on the Spanish clergy, and the practice of confession in the Catholic 
Church. I own that, when he takes in such bad part the strong 
expressions employed in reference to the Irish Church (expressions 
employed by Protestants, and not by Roman Catholics), I am sur- 
prised that he should not himself abstain from observations oflensive 
to the religious feelings of Roman Catholic members of this house. 
The right honorable baronet has done me the honor to produce an 
extract from a speech of mine, delivered nearly two years ago at the 
Coburg Gardens ; and at the same time expressed himself in terms 
of praise of the humble individual who now addresses you. I can 
assure the right honorable baronet that I feel at least as much plea- 
sure in listening to him, as he has the goodness to say that he 
•derives from hearing me. He has many of the accomplishments 



488 TREASURE OF ELOQUENCE. 

attributed by Milton to a distinguished speaker in a celebrated coun- 
cil. He is "in 'act most gi'aceful and humane, his tongue drops 
manna." I cannot but feel pride that he should entertain so high an 
opinion of me, as to induce him to peruse and collect all that I say 
even beyond these walls. He has spent the recess, it appears, ia 
the diligent selection of such passages as he has read to-night, and 
■which I little thought, when they were uttered, that the right honor- 
able baronet would tliink worthy of his comments. However, he 
owes me the return of an obligation. The last time I s^joke iu this 
house, I referred to a celebrated speech of his at Cockermouth, in 
which he pronounced an eloquent invective against "a recreant 
Whig ; " and as he found that I was a diligent student of those 
models of eloquence which the right honorable baronet used formerly 
to supply, in advocating the popular rights, he thought himself 
bound, I suppose, to repay me by the citation, which has, I believe, 
produced less effect than he had anticipated. The right honorable 
baronet also adverted to what he calls "the Lichiield House com- 
pact." It is not worth while to go over the same ground, after I 
have already proved, by reading in the house the speech which has 
been the subject of so much remark — how much I have been mis- 
represented ; I never said that there was a "compact;" I did say, 
and I repeat it, that there was "a compact alliance." Was that the 
first occasion on which an alliance was entered into ? Was Lichfield 
House the only spot ever dedicated to political reconciliations .' Has 
the right honorable baronet forgotten, or has the noble lord (Stanley) 
who sits beside him, succeeded in dismissing from his recollection, 
a meeting at Bi'ookes's Club, at which the Irish and English reform- 
ers assembled, and, in the emergency which had taken place, agreed 
to relinquish their differences and make a united stand against the 
common foe ? Does the noble lord forget an admirable speech (it 
was the best post-prandial oration it was ever my good fortune to 
have heard) delivered by a right honorable gentleman who was not 
then a noble lord, and was accompanied by a vehemence of gesture 
and a force of intonation not a little illustrative of the emotions of 
the orator, on his anticipated ejectment from office? That eloquent 
individual, whom I now see on the Tory side of the house, got upon 
a table, and with vehement and almost appalling gesture, pronounced 
an invective against the Duke of Wellington, to which, in the 



RICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 489^ 

records of vituperation, few parallels can be found. I shall not 
repeat what the noble lord then said. 

Lord Stanley — You may. 

Mr. Sheil — No ; my object is not to excite personal animosities 
among new, but ardent friends. I have no malevolent motive ia 
adverting to that remarkable occasion. If I have at all referred to 
it, it is because the right honorable baronet has been sufficiently in- 
discreet to talk of Lichfield House :■ — ^ let him, for the future, con- 
fine himself to the recollections of Brookes's, instead of selecting as 
the subject of his sarcasms the meeting in which that reconciliation 
took place to which Ireland is indebted for the exclusion of the noble 
lord opposite, and his associates, from power. The right honorable 
baronet has been guilty of another imprudence : he has charged Lord 
Mulgrave with the promotion of Mr. Pigot to a forensic office in 
Dublin Castle. Mr. Pigot's oflence, it seems, consists in his having 
been a member of the Precursor Association. Does the right hon- 
orable baronet recollect where he sits in this house — with whom he 
is co-operating — with what party he and the noble lord opposite 
have entered into confederacy — when he makes matters of this kind 
the groundwork of imputation ? Who were the first men selected 
for promotion by the Tories? To what association did they belong? 
Let the honorable baronet look back, and behind him he will see the 
treasurer, the grand treasurer, of the Orange Association, whom the 
member for Tamwortli appointed Treasurer of the Ordnance — when 
his Sovereign placed him atthe head of the government of his coun- 
try. What are the offences of the National Association, when com- 
pared with the proceedings of the Orange Institution? Are our 
proceedings clandestine ? Are figures and symbols resorted to by 
us? Have we tampered with the army, as the Orange Society has 
been convicted by a committee of this house of having done ? 

Colonel Perceval — I den}' that the Orange Society tampered with 
the army. I admit that such warrants were issued. 

Mr. Sheil — I will not dispute with the gallant colonel about a 
word. If the phrase "tampered" be objected to, I will adopt any 
word the gallant colonel will do me the favor to suggest, in order to 
express a notorious and undisputable fact. It was pi'oved beyond 
all doubt, and even beyond all controversy, that»the Orange Society 
made the utmost efforts to extend itself into the armj' ; that a nuni- 



490 TREASURY OF ELOQUEXCE. 

ber of regimental warrants were issued, and that resolutions were 
actually passed, at meetings of the society, upon the subject. From 
this society, the gallant officer, who was one of its functionaries, was 
selected, in order to place him in the Ordnance ; and, by a curious 
■coincidence, having been treasurer to the Orange Institution, he 
was appointed to the same fiscal office in the Ordnance, to whose 
treasureship he was raised. How, then, can gentlemen be guilty of 
the imprudence of talking of Mr. Pigot's apjDointment — (he is a 
gentleman conspicuous for his talents and high personal char- 
acter) — when their own party made, within a period so recent, 
such an appointment as that to which I have reluctantly but un- 
avoidably adverted. But, Sir, can we not discuss the great measure 
of municipal reform without descending to such small and transitory 
considerations as the selection of this or that man for office ? Talk 
of Lord Mulgrave's government as you will, j'ou cannot deny that 
his administration has been, beyond all example, successful. He 
has acted on the wise and obvious policy of adapting the sjiirit of 
his government to the feelings of the numerous majority of that 
Irish nation by whom he is respected and beloved. His measures 
have been founded on the determination to regard the rights of the 
manj', instead of consulting the factious interests of the few ; and, 
by the just and wise system on which he has acted, he has efiiectedia 
complete reconciliation between the government and the people. 
You speak of his liberating prisoners from gaols : — I disdain even 
to advert, in rejily, to the comments which have been made on this 
act of clemency b}' men who are naturally the advocates of incar- 
ceration. I meet these gentlemen with the broad fact, that the country 
has, under Lord Midgrave's government, made a great progress to- 
wards that pacification which I make no doubt that, under his 
auspices, Ireland will attain. Look to the county which I have the 
honor to represent, and which has been unhappily conspicuous for 
the disturbances of which it was once the scene. Mr. Howley, the 
assistant-barrister for that county — a gentleman whose authority is 
imimpeachable, and who, by his impartial conduct, his admirable 
temper, his knowledge, and his talents, has won the applause of all 
parties — states, in his charge delivered at Nenagh, that there is an 
end to the savage combats at fairs ; and, in a return made by the 
•clerk of the crown for the county, it appears that, in every class of 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 491 

crime, there has been, within the hist year, a most extraordinary 
diminution. This surely is better evidence than tiie assertions made 
in Tory journals, and adopted by gentlemen whose political interests 
are at variance with their amiable aspirations for the establishment 
of order in their countrj^. But, sir, the most remarkable incident 
to the administration of my Lord Mulgrave has been, its effect upon 
the great political question which, not very long ago, produced so 
much excitement in one country, and not a little apprehension in the 
other. '\A'^ithout having recourse to coercive bills — without resort- 
ing to a single measure of severity — by impressing the people of 
Ireland with a conviction that he was determined to do them justice, 
Lox'd Mulgrave has laid the Repeal question at rest. It is, if not 
dead, at least deeply dormant ; and, although such a policy as that 
of the noble lord opposite would soon awaken or resuscitate it again, 
as long as the principles on which the government of Lord Mulgrave 
and of the noble lord the member for Yorkshire* is carried on, are 
adhered to, so long you will find that the people of Ireland will re- 
main in a relation not only of amity, but of attachment to the 
administration. It may be asked, how the good results of the 
policy I have been describing can affect the question before the 
house? Thus: — the executive has, by its judicious measures, by 
adapting itself to the political condition of the country, and by its 
preference of the nation to a faction, completely succeeded. It has 
held out a model which the legislature ought to imitate. Let the 
parhament enact laws in the spirit in which the laws, even as they 
stand, have been carried into effect in Ireland. Let the good of the 
country, instead of the monopoly of a party, supply the standard by 
which pai'liament shall regulate its legislation ; and to what the Irish 
government has so nobly commenced, a perfect and glorious com- 
pletion will one day be given. 

I turn from the consideration of those topics connected with the 
existing condition of affairs in Ireland, to the discussion of the 
broader ground on which the question ought to be debated. I ask 
you to do justice to Ireland. Every man in this house Avill 
probably say, that he is anxious to do Ireland justice. But 
what is justice to Ireland? It will assist us, in investigat- 
ing that question, to determine, in the first place, what is justice 

* Lord Morpeth. 



492 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to England? In this country the Corporation and Test Acts 
were always regarded as the muniments of the churches and cor- 
porations, through their effects, as its chief bulwarks. Mr. Canning 
"U'as so strongly persuaded of this, that in 1827, while he declared 
himself the advocate of emancipation, he announced his firm resolve 
to stand by the Protestant corporations, and not to consent to the re- 
peal of the law which gave them their peculiar character, and con- 
nected them with the establishment. Those laws were, however, 
repealed by the member for Tamworth ; he could not help repealing 
them ; he then began to undergo that process of soft compulsion, in 
submitting to which he afterwards acquired those habits of useful 
complaisance — in which we shall furnish him with the strongest 
motives to persevere. The Test and Corporation Acts having been 
repealed, still, through the machinery of self-election, the body of 
the peojile were dejDrived of the practical advantages which ought to 
have resulted from that repeal. The reformed House of Commons 
determined to place corporations under jJopular control. The Lords 
thought it imprudent to resist. No one was found bold enough to 
state that because a transfer of power would take place from the 
Tories to the Reformers, therefore corporations should be abolished. 
Take Liverpool as an example. A transfer of influence has taken 
place there, to such an extent that, very much to the noble lord's 
astonishment, his plan for the mutilation of the Word of God has 
been adopted in the schools under the superintendence of the cor- 
jiorations. Let us now jiass to L'eland. I will admit for the sake 
of a gument, that corporations were established to protect the Pro- 
testant Church ; they would thus rest on the same ground as the 
Test and Corporation Acts : the latter having been abandoned in 
England,- and having been followed by corporate reform, the same 
reasons apply to the relinquishment of the principle of exclusion in 
Ireland, which is utterly incompatible with the ground on which 
Catholic Emancipation was acknowledged to have been conceded. 
"What took place wlicn emancipation was carried ? Was it intimated 
that we should be excluded from corporations ? The direct contraiy 
was asserted. " Roman Catholics [said the right honorable member 
for Tamworth, in the admirable speech in which he acknowledged 
the gentle violence by which the rights of Ireland were ravished from 
his reluctant coyness] , Roman Catholics shall be admitted to all cor- 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 493 

porate ofEces in Ireland." This was strong ; l)ut he did more. In 
the bill framed under his superintendence, two clauses were intro- 
duced providing for the admission of Catholics into corporations. 
Was the right honorable gentleman sincere ? Did he intend that to 
the heart of Ireland, beating as it was with hope, the word of promise 
should be kept? Who can doubt it? Who can believe that the 
right honorable baronet would be capable of practising a delusion ? 
What he did, he did unwillingly ; but he did with honesty whatever 
he did. His act of enfranchisement was baffled in this regard, and, 
by a combination among corporators, Catholics were excluded. 
From that day to this, not a single Roman Catholic — not one — has 
been admitted into the corporations attached to the metropolis of our 
country. I boldly ask the right honorable baronet whether he ap- 
proves of this exclusion, and of the means by which it was effected? 
Was it not a fraud upon us, and upon the law, by which, clearly and 
unequivocally, admission into corporations was secured to us? If 
it was intended that we should not have the benefit of Catholic 
Emancipation in this particular, it ought, in common candour, to 
have been told us ; but to pass an act making us admissil)le — to al- 
low seven years to pass, and permit the law to be frustrated in that 
interval — and then when a measure is brought forward in order to 
give us the advantage of that law, to destroy corporations lest we 
should be admitted — is not consistent with English fairness, with 
that honest dealing for which you are conspicuous, nor, let me add, 
with the personal character of the right honorable baronet. Ay, but 
the church may be injured. Why did you not think of that when 
emancipation was being carried? Why make your argument in 
favor of the church posterior to 3'our legislation against it? I call 
on the right honorable baronet, not only in the name of justice to us, 
but in the name of his own dignity, as he would preserve that amity 
with himself which results from the consciousness of honest and noble 
dealing — I call on him to abandon his party, in adherence to his 
pledge ; and if, between his politics and his integrity, he must make 
a choice, I know that he will not hesitate, for a moment, in making 
his election. 

He fears an injury to the church. This church, by which a single 
object contemplated in a national establishment has never yet been 
-attained — this church of yours is made the burden of every speech 



494 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

by which the cause of Toryism is sought to bo maintained ; and to 
every project for the improvement of the countr}^, and the assertion 
of the people's rights, is presented as an insuperable object. When 
we call on you to abolish the fatal in^post which keeps the country 
in a paroxysm of excitement, you cry out, "the Church!" When 
we bid you rescue the country from the frightful litigation which 
turns our courts of justice into an arena for the combat of the politi- 
cal passions, you cry out, " the Church ! " And when we implore 
you to fulfil your contract at the Union, to redeem 3'our pledge, 
given with emancipation, to extend to us British privileges, and 
grant us British institutions, you cry out "the Church ! " The two 
countries must have the same church, and for that purpose the two 
countries must not have the same cort^orations ! They are incom- 
patible, we must then elect between them ; which shall we prefer — 
the church of one million, or the corporations of seven. What an 
argument do the auxiliaries of the establishment advance, when they 
admit that the sacritice of the national rights is necessary for its 
sustainmcnt. But if this position be founded, wherefoi-e was parlia- 
mentary reform ever conceded to us? Are we qualified to elect 
members of the House of Commons, but unfit to elect members of 
the Common Council? Are we unworthy of being the managers of 
our own local concerns — while here, in this great Imperial assem- 
bly, with the legislators of the Bi-itish empire, with the arbiters of 
the destiny of the noblest nation in the world, we stand on a lofty 
level ? Never was there any inconsistency comjjarable to this ! I 
have a right to rise up here, and to demand justice for my country, 
as representative of the second county in Ireland ; and I am unwoi- 
thy of being a corporator of Cashel or of Clonmel. I may be told 
that the Tories resisted the extension of paidiamentary reform to 
Ireland, and on the very grounds on which they oppose the applica- 
tion of corporate reform. I must acknowledge it : they did insist 
that the close boroughs of Ireland were intended as the bulwarks of 
the Protestant iuterest ; they did contend that a Catholic ascendency 
Avould be the result of a parliamentary reform ; and they urged with 
great zeal and strenuousness, that the demolition of the Established 
Church would be its inevitable consequence. In what a burst of 
lofty eloquence did the noble lord, who now sits opposite, refute 
them ! " What ! " lie exclaimed, " deny to Ireland the benefits of the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 495 

reform you give to England — withhold from Ireland the advantages 
■which, at the Union, you pledged yourselves to grant her ! deny her 
a community in your privileges, and an equal participation in your 
rigiits ! Then you may i-epeal the Union at once, for you will ren- 
der it a degrading and dishonorable compact." But I da injustice 
to that admirable passage ; and as the noble lord may have forgot- 
ten it, as his recollections may be as evanescent as his opinions, I 
think it better to read what, from memory, I have imperfectly 
referred to. The passage will be found in the 17th volume of "The 
Mirror of Parliament," page 2288. He begins with a panegyric on 
the Irish members. We were agitators then, just as much as we 
now are ; we held and professed exactly the same opinions ; we had 
an association at full work, just as we now have ; but the noble lord 
did not, at that time, think it judicious to appeal to passages to 
which he has since addressed himself. The passage runs thus : — 

" We have been told that the English bill does not in any case 
apply to Ireland, and that the circumstances of the two countries 
are different : but I am sure that honorable gentleman will iind that 
the principle of reform is the same, whether it applied to England 
or Ireland ; and if it be just here, so it must be just there. I would 
entreat those who advocate the Conservative interests, and who con- 
sider themselves the supporters of Protestant institutions, to look to 
the danger to which these institutions will be exposed in Ireland by 
withholding the privileges which this bill is to confer. If they wish 
to give Ireland a real, solid, substantial grievance — if they wish to 
give some handle to excitement, and to present a solid argument for 
the repeal of the Union — they need only show that, in the British 
House of Commons, English inte;rcsts are treated in one way, and 
Irish interests in another, that iu England the government rule by 
free representation, and by the voice of the people — while in Ire- 
land that voice is stifled, and the people are shut out from a fair 
share in the choice of their representatives. I fear that, if we do 
not concede in a spirit of fairness and justice, agitation will break 
out in a manner which it has never done before. I cannot conceive 
anything more clear than that the present measure is only the exten- 
sion of the principle of the English bill to Ireland. I cannot 
conceive upon what principle we can refuse to place both countries 
on an equality, and make the same principle applicable to the 



496 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

election of all members of the united Legislature of the British 
empire." 

The house has heard this passage with surprise ; and although 
every sentence that I have read has produced a sensation, there is 
not, in the entire, a sentiment which has called forth more astonish- 
ment than the reference made to the repeal of the Union, as a result 
of the denial of equal privileges to the English and to the Irish peo- 
ple. And here let me turn to the right honorable member for Cum- 
berland and ask him, what he now thinks of his expostulation with 
the Irish Attorney-General, on his assertion that injustice would 
furnish an argument for i-epeal. Did not his noble friend, when in 
office, when secretary for Ireland, solemnly assert the same thing? 
I will I'ead the passage again — "If they wish to give Ireland a real, 
solid, substantial grievance — if they wish to give some handle to 
excitement, and to present a solid argument for the repeal of the 
Union — they need onlj' show that in the British House of Com- 
mons, English interests are treated in one way, and Irish interests 
in another." This is nobly expressed ; but, in the midst of our 
admiration of such fine sentiments, founded on such lofty principles, 
and conveyed in language at once so beautiful and so perspicuous, 
what melancholy feelings, what mournful reflections arise ! Alas ! 
that the man who uttered what I have just read, who was capable 
of feeling and of expressing himself thus, in whom such a union of 
wisdom and eloquence was then exhibited — alas ! that he should 
now be separated from his old associates, and that, united to his 
former antagonists, he should not only act on principles diametri- 
cally the reverse, but denounce his colleagues, and enter with men 
whom he formerly represented as the worst enemies of his country 
into a derogatory league. But, not contented with joining them, 
in the transports of his enthusiasm he has gone bej'ond them ; and 
on the first night of this debate, taking up the part of a prophet, 
when he had ceased to perform that of a statesman, he told the peo- 
ple of Ireland, in a burst of intemperate prediction, that never — 
no, never — should the municipal privileges, granted to the people 
of England, be extended to them. 

Lord Stanley — I never said so. 

Mr. Shcil — Then the noble lord has been grievously misrepi'esented. 
I acknowledge that I was not present when he spoke, but I was told 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 497 

hy several persons that he had stated that this measure never should 
he caiTied. 

Lord Stanley — I did not state that the measure never should be 
carried. I did state that the people of England would not yield to 
alarm and intimidation, and that the advocates of this measure were 
taking the tvorst means to effect their object. The honoral)le and 
learned gentlemen confesses that he was not present when I spoke, 
and he should therefore be cautious in attributing to me the opinions 
which he has ascribed to me, in this attack which he has been making, 
knowing, as he does, that it is out of my power to reply. 

Mr. Shiel — When the noble lord denies the use of certain expres- 
sions, and disclaims the sentiment conveyed by them, I at once 
accede to his interpretation of what he said, or rather meant to say. 
The noble lord observes that I am making an attack on him, knowing 
that he has no reply. The noble lord is well aware, from experience, 
that whether he has a right to reply or not, I never have the least 
dread of him, and that on no occasion in this house, have I ever, in 
the performance of my duty to my country, shrunk from an encounter 
with him. He calls my speech an attack on him. I am not pro- 
nouncing a personal invective against the noble lord. I am not 
exceeding the limits of fair discussion, or violating either the ordin- 
ances of good breeding or the rules of this house. I am exhibiting 
the inconsistencies and incongruities of the noble lord, and stripping 
his opinions of any value which they may possess, by proving him, 
at a period not remote, to have acted on, and to have enforced, 
principles directly opposite to those of which he is now the intolerant 
advocate. This is the extent of my attack on him. He will, how- 
«ver, pardon me for suggesting to him, that, if I did assail him with 
far more acrimony than I am disposed to do, he is the last man in 
this house who ought to complain. Who is there that shows less 
mercy to a political adversary ? Who is so relentless in the infliction 
of his sarcasms, even on his old friends and associates? However, 
I ought not to feel mvich surprise that he should be so sensitive as he 
shows himself to be : no man fears an operation so much as a surgeon, 
and the drummer of a regiment trembles at the lash. But the noble 
lord mistakes ; it is not an attack from me which he has cause to ap- 
prehend ; — he bears that within his own bosom which reproaches him 
far more than I do. But, from his emotions, fx-om his resentments, 



498 TREASUKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

and from his consciousness, let us turn to something more deserving 
of regard, and consider how far it is probable that this measure can 
be successfully resisted. I wish to avoid all minacious intimations, 
and, therefore, I M'ill not say that it must and shall be cari-ied ; but^ 
adopting the calmer tone of deliberation, I entreat the noble lord 
opposite, and the house, to consider what the probabilities are which 
are connected with this question, and whether it is likely that the 
demand made by Ireland for justice can be long treated by any branch 
of the legislature with disregard? 

I assert that Ireland, sustained as she is by the sympathies of a 
very large portion of the peo2:)le in this country, must prevail in the 
cause in which her feelings are so deeply engaged, and on whose 
prosecution she is firmly and unalterably determined. I undertake 
to jDrove this proposition, and it will certainly be felt to be most 
important to consider whether it be just ; for if men are once per- 
suaded that this measure must ultimately be carried, they will feel 
that it is better to do, at once, what must be done at last, and that 
discussion ought to cease where necessity has begun to operate. I 
put the case of Ireland thus : — if the Catholic millions, by their 
union, by their organization, by their associated power, carried their 
emanciijation, what is the likelihood of their success in the pursuit of 
their present objects? If wc forced the right honorable member for 
Tamworth to yield to us (a man not only of as great eloquence in 
debate, but of great discretion, of great influence, free from ebullitions 
of intemperance, and whose personal character entitles him to the 
confidence of his party), shall we not now overcome any obstacles 
which the noble lord may present to our progress ? Let him remember 
that our power is more than trebled, and if, contending with such 
disadvantages as we had to struggle with, we pi'cvailed, where are 
the impediments by which our career in the pursuit of what remains 
to be achieved for the honor of our country, shall be even long 
retarded ? It behoves the noble lord to look attentively at Ireland. 
Wherever we turn our eyes, we see the national power dilating, 
expanding, and ascending : never did a liberated nation spring on in 
the career that freedom throws open towards improvement with such 
a bound as we have; in wealth, in intelligence, in high feeling, in 
all the great constituents of a state, we have made in a few years aa 
astonishing progress. The character of our country is completely 



RICHARD LALOU SHEIL. 499 

chans^ed : we are free, and we feel as if we never bad been slaves. 
Ireland stands as erect as if she had never stooped ; although she 
once bowed her forehead to the earth, every mark and trace of her 
prostration have been effaced. But these are generalities ; thcse.are 
vaffue and abstract vauntings, without detail. Well, if yon stand in 
need of specification, it shall be rapidly, but not inconclusively, given. 
But hold : I was going to point to the first law ofiices in the country, 
filled by Roman Catholics ; I was going to point to the second 
judical otfice in Ireland filled by a Roman Catholic ; I Avas going to 
point to the crowds of Roman Catholics who, in every profession and 
walk of life, are winning their way to eminence in the walks that 
lead to affluence or to honor. But one single fact sufiices for my 
purpose : emancipation was followed by reform, and reform has 
thrown sixty men, devoted to the interests of Ireland, into the House 
of Commons. If the Clare election was a great incident ; if the 
Clare election aflbrded evidence that emancipation could not be 
resisted, look at sixtj^ of us (what are Longff)rd and Carlow but a 
realization of the splendid intimations that Clare held out), look, I 
say, at sixty of us, — the majority, the great majority of the repre- 
sentatives of Ireland, — leagued and confederated by an obligation 
and a pledge as sacred as any with which men, associated for the 
interests of their country, were ever bound together. Thank God, 
we are here ! I remember the time when the body to which I belong 
was excluded from all participation in the great legislative rights of 
which we are now in the possession. I remember to have felt 
humiliated at the tone in which I heard the cause of Ireland pleaded, 
when I was occasionally admitted under the gallery of the House of 
Commons. I felt pain at hearing us represented as humble suppliants 
for liberty, and as asking freedom as if it were alms that we were 
soliciting. Perhaps that tone was unavoidable : thank God, it is no 
longer necessary or appropriate. Here we are, in all regards your 
equals, and demanding our rights as the representatives of Britons 
would demand their own. AVe have less eloquence, less skill, less 
astuteness than tiie great men to whom, of old, the interests of 
Ireland were confided ; but we make up for these imperfections by 
the moral port and national bearing that become us. In mastery of 
diction we may be defective ; in resources of argument wc may be 
wanting ; we may not be gifted with the accomplishments by which 



500 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

persuasion is produced ; but in energy, in strenuousness, in union, 
in fidelity to our country and to each other, and above all in the 
undaunted and dauntless determination to enforce equality for Ireland, 
we stand unsurpassed. This, then, is the power with which the 
noble lord courts an encounter, foretells his own victories, and 
triumphs in their anticipation in the House of Commons. Where 
are his means of discomfiting us ? To what resources does he look 
for the accomplishment of the wonders which he is to perform? 
Does he rely upon the excitement of the religious and national 
prejudices of England ; and does he find it in his heart to resort to 
the "no Popery" cry ! Instead of telling him what he is doing, I'll 
tell the country what, thirty years ago, was done. In 1807, the 
Whigs were in possession of Downing-street, and the Tories were in 
possession of St. James's Palace, but, without the people, the 
possession of St. James's was of no avail. The Whigs proposed that 
Koman Catholics should be admitted to the higher grades in the army 
and navy. The Tories saw that their opportunity was come, and 
the "no Popery" cry was raised. There existed, at that time, a 
great mass of prejudice in England. You had conquered Ireland 
and enslaved her ; you hated her for the wrongs that j^ou had done her, 
and despised her, and perhaps justly, for her endurance : the victim 
of oppression naturally becomes the object of scorn ; you loathed 
oin- country, and you abhorred our creed. Of this feeling, the Tories 
took advantage ; the tocsin of fanaticism was rung ; the war-whoop 
of religious discord, the savage yell of infuriated ignorance, resounded 
through the countr}-. Events, that ought to have been allowed to 
remain buried intheoblivionof centuries, were disinterred ; every mis- 
deed of Catholics, when Catholics and Protestants imbrued their hands 
alternately in blood, was recalled ; the ashesof the Smithfield fires were 
stirred, for sparks with which the popular passions might be ignited. 
The re-establishment of Popery ; the downfall of every Protestant 
institution ; the annihilation of all liberty, civil or religious, these 
were the topics with which crafty men, without remorse of conscience, 
worked on the popular delusion. At public assemblies, senators, 
more remarkable for Protestant piety than Christian charit}', delivered 
themselves of ferocious eflusions amidst credulous and enthusiastic 
multitudes. Then came public abuses, at which libations to the 
worst passions of human nature were prodigally poured out. " Kally 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 501 

round the King, rally round the church, rally round the religion of 
your forefathers," these were the invocations with which the English 
people were wrought into frenzy ; and having, by these expedients, 
driven their antagonists from ofEce, the Tories passed, themselves, 
the very measure for which they made their competitors the objects 
of their denunciation. Are you playing the same game ? If you 
are, then shame, shame upon you ! I won't pronounce upon your 
motives : let the facts be their interpreters. What is the reason that 
a new edition of Fox's Martyrs, with hundreds of subscribers;, and 
with the name of the Duke of Cumberland at their head, has been 
announced? Wherefore, from one extremity of the country to the 
other, in every city, town, and hamlet, is a perverse ingenuity 
employed, in order to inspire the people of this country with a 
detestation of the religion of millions of their fellow-citizens. Why 
is Popery, with her racks, her tortures, and her faggots, conjured 
up in order to appal the imagination of the English people ? W^hy 
is perjury to our God, treason to our Sovereign, a disregard of every 
obligation, divine and human, attributed to us? I leave you to 
answer those questions, and to give your answers, not only to the 
interrogatories which thus vehemently, and, I will own, indignantly 
I put to you, but to reply to those which must be administered to 
you, in your moments of meditation, by your own heai'ts. But, 
whatever be your purpose in the religious excitement which you are 
endeavoring to get up in this country, of this I am convinced, that 
the result of your expedients will correspond with their deserts, and 
that as we have prevailed over you before, we shall again and again 
discomfit you. Yes, we, the Ii-ish millions, led on by men like 
those that plead the cause of those millions in this house, must (it 
is impossible that we should not) prevail : and I am convinced that 
the people of England, so far from being disposed to array themselves 
against us, despite any remains of the prejudices which are fast 
passing away in this country, feel that we are entitled to the same 
privileges, and extend to us their sympathies in this good and glorious 
cause. 

What is that cause? I shall rapidly tell you. You took away 
our parliament — you took from us that parliament, which, like the 
House of Commons of this country, must have been under the 
control of the great majority of the people of Ireland, and would 



502 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

not, and could not, have withheld what you so long refused us. Is 
there a mau here who doubts that if the Union had not been conceded, 
we should have extorted emancipation and reform from our own 
House of Commons? That House of Commons you bought, and 
paid for your bargain in gold ; aye, and paid for it in the most 
palpable and sordid form in which gold can be paid down. But, 
while this transaction was pending, you told us that all distinctions 
should be abolished between us, and that we should become like 
unto yourselves. The great minister of the time, by whom that 
unexampled sale of our legislature was negotiated, held out equality 
with England as the splendid equivalent for the loss of our national 
representation ; and, with classical references, elucidated the noble- 
ness of the compact into which he had persuaded the depositants of 
the rights of their countrymen to enter. The act of Union was 
passed, and twenty-nine years elapsed before any effectual measure 
was taken to carry its i-cal and substantial terms into effect. At last, 
our enfranchisement was won by our oAvn energy and determination ; 
and, when it was in progress, we received assurances that, in every 
respect, we should be placed on a footing with our fellow-citizens ; 
and it was more specially announced to us, that to corporations, and 
to all offices connected with them, we should be at once admissible. 
Pending this engagement a bill is passed for the reform of the cor- 
porations of this countr}' ; and in every important municipal locality 
in England, councillors are selected by the people as their represen- 
tatives. This important measure having been carried here, the Irish 
people claim an extension of the same advantages ; and ground their 
title on the Union, on Emancipation, on Reform, and on the great 
principle of perfect equality between the two countries, on which 
the security of one country and the prosperity of both must depend. 
This demand, on the part of Ireland, is rejected ; and that, which to 
England no one was bold enough to deny, from Ireland you are 
determined, and you announce it, to withhold. Is this justice? You 
will say that it is, and I should be surprised if you did not say so. 
I should be surprised, indeed, if, while you are doing us wrong, you 
did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on 
which Strongbow set his foot on the shore of Ireland, Englishmen 
were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us 
justice: — even Strafford, the deserter of the people's cause — the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 503 

renegade Wentwovth, who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of 
instinctive tyranny wliich predominated in his character — even 
Straflbi'd, while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the 
heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland. 
What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite should deal in such 
vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great 
abilities, not a member of this house, but whose talents and whose 
boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party — who, 
disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal 
directly to the religious and national antipathies of the people of 
this country — abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender 
veil by which his political associates affect to cover, although they 
«annot hide their motives — distinctly and audaciously tells the 
Irisii people that they are not entitled to the same privileges as 
Englishmen ; and pronounces them, in any particular which could 
enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow- 
citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion — to be aliens 
— to be aliens in race, to be aliens in country, to be aliens in 
religion.* Aliens! good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, 
in the House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, "Hold ! 
I have seen the aliens do their duty"? The Duke of Wellington is 
not a man of an excitable temperament. His miud is of a cast too 
martial to be easily moved ; but notwithstanding his habitual in- 
flexibility, I cannot help thinking that when he heard his Roman 
Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a 
phrase as oflfensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent con- 
federate could supply — I cannot help thinking that he ought to have 
recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been con- 
tributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has 

*Lord Lyndhurst was sitting under the gaUery during Mr. Slieil's speech. Mr. 
■Slieil loolced and shooli liis liead indignantly at liim at tiiis part of his speech. The 
■effect produced was remarl^able. The whole liouse turned towards Lord Lyndhurst, 
and the shouts of the ministerialists, encountered by the vehement outcries of the 
■Conservatives, continued for minutes. 

The " Times " next morning observed : '" A scene of the Corn-Exchange character 
occurred in the course of Mr. Sheil'.s speech, when referring to the expressions said 
to have been used by Lord Lyndhurst with respect to ' aliens.' The honorable 
member for Tipperary turned towardc the benches allotted to the peers, where Lord 
Lyndhurst was sitting. This was the signal for the most infuriate yelling from the 
ministerial benches." — " Times," February 23, 1837. 



504 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

passed," ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have 
remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he disphiyed 
that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of 
modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has 
made his name imperishable — from Assaye to Waterloo — the Irish 
soldiers, with whom your armies are tilled, were the inseparable 
auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have 
been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at 
Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war 
before? What desperate valor cliftibed the steeps and filled the 
moats at Badajos ? All his victories should have rushed and crowded 
back upon his memorj^ — Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, 
Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest — . Tell me, for you were 
there — I appeal to the gallant soldier before me (Sir Henry Har- 
dinge) from whose opinions I diifer, but who bears, I know, a gen- 
erous heart in an intrepid breast ; — tell me, for you must needs 
remember — on that day when the destinies of mankind were tremb- 
ling in the balance — while death fell in showers — when the artillery 
of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science 
— when her legions, incited by the voice, and inspired by the ex- 
ample of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset — 
tell me if, for an instant, when, to hesitate for an instant was to be 
lost, the " aliens " blenched ? And when at length the moment for 
the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valor which had 
so long been wisely checked, was at last let loose — when, with 
words familiar, but immortal, the great captain commanded the great 
assault — tell me, if Catho.lic Ireland, with less heroic valor than the 
natives of this your own glorious country, precipitated herself upon 
the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland flowed in 
the same stream, and drenched the same field. Wben the chill morn- 
ing dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; — in the same 
deep pit their bodies were deposited — the green corn of spring is 
now breaking from their commingled dust — the dew falls from 
heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril — 
in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate ; and shall Ave 
be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country 
for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out? 






'mWn: 




IRETON CONDEMNING THE BISHOP OF LIMERICK. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 505 



The Catholics of Ireland, 

Speech at Penenden Heath, 24th October, 1828. 



I^^ET no man believe that I have come here, in order that I might 
1^1 enter the lists of religious controversy and engage with any 
2^ of you in a scholastic disputation. In the year 1828, the 
I Real Presence does not afibrd an appropriate subject for 
debate, and it is not by the shades of a mystery that the rights of a 
British citizen are to be determined. I do not know whether there 
are many here by whom I am regarded as an idolater, because I con- 
scientiously adhere to the faith of your forefathers, and profess the 
doctrine in which I was born and bred ; but if I am so accounted by 
you, you ought not to inflict a civil deprivation upon the accident of 
the cradle. You ought not to punish me for that for which I am not 
ia reality to blame. If you do, you will make the misfortune of the 
Catholic the fault of the Protestant, and by inflicting a wrong upon 
my religion, cast a discredit upon your own. I am not the worse 
subject of my king, and the worse citizen of my country, because I 
concur in the belief of the great majority of the Christian world ; 
and I will venture to add, with the frankness and something of the 
bluutness by which Englishmen are considex'ed to be characterised, 
that if I am an idolater, I have a right to be one, if I choose ; my 
idolatry is a branch of my prerogative, and is no business of yours. 
But you have been told by Lord Winchelsea that the Catholic reli- 
gion is the adversary of freedom. It may occur to you, perhaps, 
that his lordship affords a proof in his own person, that a passion for 
Protestantism and a love of libei'ty are not inseparably associated ; 
but without instituting too minute or embaiTassing an inquiry into 
the services to freedom, which in the course of his political life have 
been conferred by my Lord Winchelsea, and putting aside all per- 



506 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

sonal considerations connected with the accuser, let me proceed to 
the accusation. Calumniators of Catholicism, have you read the 
history of your country? Of the charges against the religion of 
Ireland, the annals of England afford the confutation. The body of 
your common laws was given l)y the Catholic Alfred. He gave you 
your judges, your magistrates, your high sherifls — (you, sir, hold 
your office, and have called this great assembly, by virtue of his 
institutions) — your courts of justice, j'our elective sj'stem, and, the 
great bulwark of your liberties, the trial by jury. When English- 
men peruse the chronicles of their glory, their hearts beat high Mith 
exultation, their emotions are profoundly stirred, and their souls are 
ardently expanded. Where is the English boy, who reads the story 
of his great island, whose pulse does not beat at the name of Eunne- 
mede, and whose natui'C is not deeply thrilled at the contemplation 
of that great incident, when the mitred Langton, with his uplifted 
crosier, confronted the tyrant, whose sceptre shook in his trembling 
liand, and extorted what 3'ou have so justly called the Great, and 
what, I trust iu God, you will have cause to designate as your ever- 
lasting Charter? It was by a Catholic Pontiff that the foundation- 
stone iu the temple of liberty was laid ; and it was at the altars of 
that religion, which you are accustomed to consider as the handmaid 
of oppression, that the architects of the constitution knelt down. 
Who conferred upon the people the right of self-taxation, and fixed, 
if i)e did not create, the representation of the people? The Catholic 
Edward the First ; while, iu the reign of Edward the Third, perfec- 
tion was given to the representative system, parliaments were 
annually called, and the statute against constructive treason was 
enacted. It is false, foully, infamously false, that the Catholic reli- 
gion, the religion of your forefathers, the religion of seven millions 
of your fellow-subjects, has been the auxiliary of debasement, and 
that to its influences the suppression of British freedom can, in a 
single instance, be referred. I am loath to say that which can give 
you cause to take offence ; but when the faith of my country is made 
the object of imputation, I cannot help, I cannot refrain, from break- 
ing into a retaliatory interrogation, and from asking whether th(^ 
overthrow of the old religion of England was not effected bj' a 
tyrant, with a hand of iron and a heart of stone ; whether Henry 
did not trample upon freedom, while upon Catholicism he set his 



RICHARD LALOR SHKIL. 507 

foot; and whether Elizabeth herself, the virgin of the Reformation, 
did not inherit her despotism with her creed ; whether in her reign 
the most barbarons atrocities vvere not committed; whether torture, 
in violation of the Catholic common law of England, was not politi- 
cally inflicted, and with the shrieks of agony the Towers of Julius, 
in the dead of night, did not re-echo ? And to pass to a more recent 
period, was it not on the very day on which Russell perished on the 
scaffold, that the Protestant University of Oxford published the 
declaration in favor of passive obedience, to which your Catholic 
ancestors would have laid down their lives rather than have submit- 
ted? These are facts taken from your own annals, with which every 
one of you should be made familiar ; but it is not to your own 
annals that the recriminatory evidence, on which I am di-iven to 
rel}'', shall be confined. If your religion is the inseparable attendant 
upon liberty, how does it come to pass that Prussia, and Sweden, 
and Denmark, and half the German states, should be Protestants, 
and should be also slaves? You may suggest to me, that in the 
larger portion of Catholic Europe, freedom does not exist; but you 
should bear in mind that at a period when the Catholic religion was 
in its most palmy state, freedom flourished in the countries in which 
it is now extinct. Look at Italy, not indeed as she now is, but as 
she was before Martin Luther was born, when literature and libert}'' 
were associated, and the arts imparted their embellishments to her 
free political institutions. I call up the memory of the Italian Catho- 
lic republics in the great cause which I am sufficiently adventurous 
to plead before you. Florence, accomplished, manufacturing, and 
democratic, the model of your own municipal corporations, gives a 
noble evidence in favor of Catholicism ; and Venice, Catholic Venice, 
rises in the splendor of her opulence and the light of her libert}', to 
corroborate the testimony of her celebrated sister with a still more 
lofty and majestic attestation. If from Italy I shall ascend the Alps, 
shall I not find, in the mountains of Switzerland, the sublime memo- 
rials of liberty, and the reminiscences of those old achievements 
which preceded the theology of Geneva, and whicli were performed 
by men, by whom the ritual of Rome was uttered on the glaciers, 
and the great mystery of Catholicism was celebrated on the altars 
which nature had provided for that high and holy woi'ship? But 
Spain, I may be told, Spain affords the proof that to the purposes of 



508 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

despotism her religion has always lent its impious and disastrous 
aid. That mistalce is a signal one, for when ISpainwas most devoted- 
ly Catholic, Spain was comparatively free ; her Cortes assumed an 
attitude nobler even than your own parliament, and told the king, 
at the opening of every session in which they were convened, that 
they were greater and invested with a higher authority than himself. 
In the struggles made by Spaniards, within our own memory, we 
have seen the revival of that lofty sentiment ; while amongst the 
descendants of Spaniards, in the provinces of South America, called 
into existence in some sort by yourselves, we behold no religion but 
the Catholic, and no government of which the principle is not founded 
in the supremacy of the people. Eepublic after republic has arisen 
at your bidding through that immeasurable expanse, and it is scarce 
an exaggeration to say (if I may allude to a noble passage in one of 
the greatest writers of our time), that liberty, with' her "meteor 
standard " unfurled upon the Andes, 

" Looks from her throne of clouds o'er half the world. 

False, I repeat it, with all the vehemence of indignant asseveration, 
utterly false is the charge habitually preferred against the religion 
which Englishmen have laden with penalties, and have marked with 
degradation. I can bear with any other charge but this — to any 
other charge I can listen with endurance ; tell me that I prostrate 
myself before a sculptured marble ; tell me that to a canvass glow- 
ing with the imagery of heaven I bend my knee ; tell me that my 
faith is my perdition : — and as you traverse the churchyards in 
which your forefathers are buried, pronounce upon those who have 
lain there for many hundred years a fearful and appalling sentence : 
— yes ; call what I regard as the truth not only an error, but a sin 
to which mercy shall not be extended : — all this I will bear — to all 
this I will submit — nay, at all this I will but smile : — but do not 
tell me that I am in heart and creed a slave : — that my countrymen 
cannot brook ; in their own bosoms they carry the high conscious- 
ness that never was imputation more foully false or more detestably 
calumnious. I do not believe that with the passion for true libei-ty 
a nation was ever more enthusiastically inspired — never were men 
more resolved — never were men more deserving to be free than the 
nation in whose oppression, fatally to Ireland and to themselves, the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 509 

statesmen of England have so madly persevered. What have been 
the results of that system which you have been this day called 
together to sustain? You behold in Ireland a beautiful country, 
■with wonderful advantages agricultural and commercial — a resting- 
place for trade on its way to either hemisphere ; indented with 
havens, watered by numerous rivers ; with a fortunate climate in 
which fertility is i-aised upon a rich soil, and inhabited by a bold, 
intrepid, and, with all their faults, a generous and enthusiastic 
people. Such is Ireland as God made her — what is Ireland as you 
have made her? This fine country, swarming with a population the 
■most miserable in Europe, of whose wretchedness, if you are the 
authors, you are beginning to be the victims — the poisoned chalice 
is returned in its just circulation to your lips. Harvests the most 
abundant are reaped by men with starvation in their faces ; all the 
great commercial facilities of the country are lost — the rivers that 
should circulate opulence and turn the machinery of a thousand 
manufactures, flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a 
wheel — the wave breaks in solitude in the silent magnificence of 
deserted and shipless harbors. In place of being a source of wealth 
and revenue to the empire, Ireland cannot defray its own expenses ; 
her discontent costs millions of money ; she debilitates and endan- 
gers England. The great mass of her population are alienated and 
dissociated from the state — the influence of the constituted and 
legitimate authorities is gone ; a strange, anomalous, and unex- 
ampled kind of government has sprung up, and exercises a despotic 
sway ; while the class, inferior in numbers, but accustomed to 
authority, and infuriated at its loss, are thrown into formidable 
reaction — the most ferocious passions rage from one extremity of 
the country to the other. Hundreds and thousands of men, arrayed 
with badges, gather in the south, and the smaller faction, with dis- 
cipline and with arms, are marshalled in the north — the country is 
like one vast magazine of powder, which a spark might ignite into 
an explosion, and of which England would not only feel, but, per- 
haps, never recover from the shock. And is this state of things to 
be permitted to continue ? It is only requisite to present the ques- 
. tion in order that all men should answer — something must be done. 
"What is to be done ? Are you to re-enact the Penal Code ? Are 
jouto deprive Catholics of their properties, to shut up their schools, 



510 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to drive them from the bar, to strip them of the elective fi-ancliise^ 
and reduce them to Egyptian bondage ? It is easy for some vision- 
ary in opi^ression to imagine these things. In the drunkenness of 
sacerdotal debauch men have been found to give vent to such san- 
guinary aspirations, and the teachers of the Gospel, the ministers of 
a mild and merciful Redeemer, have uttered in the midst of their 
ferocious wassails, the bloody orison, that their country should be 
turned into one vast iield of massacre, and that upon the pile of car- 
nage the genius of Orange ascendency should be enthroned. But 
these men are maniacs in ferocitj'', whose appetites for blood j^ou 
will scarcely undertake to satiate. You shrink from the extirpation 
of a whole people. Even supjiose that, with an impunity as igno- 
minious as it would be sanguinary, that horrible crime could be 
efl'ectcd, then you must needs ask, what is to be done? In answer- 
ing that question j'ou will not dismiss from your recollection that 
the greatest statesmen Avho have for the last tit'ty years directed your 
councils and conducted the business of this mighty emjiire, con- 
curred in the opinion that, without a concession of the Catholic 
claims, nothing could be done for Ireland. Burke, the foe to revo- 
lution — Fox, the asserter of popular right — Pitt, the prop of the 
prerogative, concurred. With reference to this great question their 
minds met in a deep confluence. See to what a conclusion you 
must arrive when you denounce the advocates of Emancipation. 
Your anathema will take in one-half of Westminster Abbey; and is 
not the very dust into which the tongues and hearts of Pitt, and 
Burke, and Fox have mouldered better than the living hearts and 
tongues of those who have survived them ? If you were to try the 
question by the authorities of the dead, and by those voices which 
may be said to issue from the grave, how would j^ou decide? If, 
instead of counting votes in St. Stephen's, you were to count the 
tombs in the mausoleum beside it, how would the division of the 
great departed stand? There would be a majority of sepidchres 
inscribed with immortal names upon our side. But supposing that 
authority, that the coincidence of the wisest and of the best in favor 
of Ireland was to be held in no account, consider how the religious 
disqualifications must necessarily operate. Can that be a wise 
course of government which creates not an aristocracy of opulence, 
and I'ank, and talent, but an aristocracy in religion, and places 



RICHARD LALOR SHEEL. 511 

seven millions of people at the feet of a few hundred thousand ? Try 
this fashion of government by a very obvious test, and make the 
case your own. If a few hundred thousand Presbyterians stood 
towards you in the relation in which the Irish Protestants stand 
towards the Catholics, would you endure it? Would you brook a 
system under which Episcopalians should be rendered incapable of 
holding seats in the House of Commons, should be excluded from 
sheriffships and corporate offices, and fi'om the bench of justice, and 
from all the higher offices in the administration of the law ; and 
should be tried by none but Presbyterian juries, flushed with the 
insolence of power and infuriated with all the ferocity of passion? 
How would you brook the degradation which would arise from such 
a system, and the scorn and contumelies which would flow from it? 
Would you listen with patience to men who told you that there was 
no grievance in all this — that your complaints were groundless, and 
that the very right of murmuring ouglit to be taken away? Are 
Irishmen and Roman Catholics so difl^erently constituted from your- 
selves that they are to behold nothing but blessings in a system 
which you would look upon as an unendurable wrong? Protestants 
and Englishmen, however debased you may deem our country, 
believe me that we have enough of human nature left within us — 
we have enough of the spirit of manhood, all Irishmen as we are, to 
resent a usage of this kind. Its results are obvious. The nation is 
divided into two castes. The powerful and the privileged few are 
patricians in religion, and trample upon and despise the plebeian 
Christianity of the millions who are laid prostrate at their feet. 
Every Protestant thinks himself a Catholic's better ; and every Pro- 
testant feels himself the member of a privileged corporation. 
Judges, sherifl's, crown counsel, crown attorneys, jui-ies, are Pro- 
testants to a man. What confidence can a Catholic have in the 
administration of public justice? We have the authority of au 
eminent Irish judge, the late Mr. Fletcher, ivho declared that, in 
the North, the Protestants were uniformly acquitted, and the Catho- 
lics were as undeviatingly condemned. A body of armed Orange- 
men Ml upon and put to death a defenceless Catholic ; they are put 
upon their trial, and when they raise their eyes and look upon the 
jury, as they are commanded to do, they see twelve of their brethren 
in massacre empannelled for their ti'ial ; and, after this, I shall be 



512 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

told that all the evils of Catholic disqualification lie in the dis- 
appointed longing of some dozen gentlemen after the House of 
Commons ! No ; it is the bann, the opprobrium, the brand, the 
note and mark of dishonor, the scandalous partiality, the flagitious 
bias, the sacrilegious and perjured leaning, and the monstrous and 
hydra-headed injustice, that constitute the grand and essential evils 
of the country. And you think it wonderful that we should be 
indignant at all this. You marvel, and are amazed that we are hur- 
ried into the use of rash and vehement phrases. Have Ave alone 
forgotten the dictates of charity? — have our opponents been always 
distinguished by their meekness and forbearance ? — have no exas- 
perating expressions, no galling taunts, no ferocious menaces, ever 
escaped from them? Look to the Brunswick orgies of Ireland, and 
behold not mei'ely the torturers of '98, who, like retired butchers, 
feel the want of their old occupation, and long for the political 
shambles again, but to the ministers of the Gospel, by whom their 
libations to the moloch of faction, in the revelries of a sanguinary 
ascendancy are ferociously poured out. Make allowances for the 
excesses into which, with much provocation, we may be hurried, 
and pardon us when you recollect how, under the same circum- 
stance, you would, in all likelihood, feel yourselves. Perhaps you 
will say, that while jou are conscious that we have much to suffer, 
you owe it to your own safety to exclude us froni power. We have 
power already — the power to do mischief; give us that of doing 
good. Disarray us — dissolve us — break up our confederacy — 
take from the law (the great conspirator) its coml)ining and organi- 
zing quality, and Ave shall no longer be united by the bad chain of 
slavery, but by the natural bonds of allegiance and contentment. 
You fear our possible influence in the House of Commons. Don't 
you dread our actual influence beyond its precincts ? Catholics out 
of the House of Commons: we should be citizens Avithin it. It has 
been sometimes insisted that we aim at the political exaltation of our 
church upon the ruins of the establishment — that once emancipated 
we should proceed to btrip your clergy, and to possess ourselves of 
the opulence of an anti-apostolic and anti-scriptural establishment. 
Never Avas there a more unfounded imputation. The whole body of 
the Irish Catholics look upon a wealthy priesthood with abhorrence. 
They do not desire that their bishops should be invested with ponti- 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 513 

fical gorgeousness. "VYheii a bill was introduced in order to make a 
small, and no more than a decent provision for the Catholic clergy, 
did they not repudiate tiie offer, and prefer their honoi'able poverty 
and the affections of the people to the seductions of the crown? 
How did the people act ? Although a provision for the priesthood 
would relieve them from a burden, did they not deprecate all con- 
nection with power ? The Catholics of Ireland know that if their 
clergy were endowed with the wealth of the establishment, they 
would become a profligate corporation, pampered with luxury, 
swelling with sacerdotal pride, and presenting in their lives a mon- 
strous contrast with that simplicity and that poverty of which they 
£ft-e now as well the practisers as the teachers. They know that, in 
place of being, as they now are, the indefatigable instructors of the 
peasantr}', their consolers in aflliction, their resource in calamity, 
their preceptors and their models in religion, their visitors in sick- 
ness, and their companions at the bed of death ; they would become 
equally insolent to the humble, and sycophantic to the great — flat- 
terers at the noble's table and extortioners in the poor man's hovel ; 
slaves in politics, and tyrants in demeanor, who from the porticoes 
of palaces would give their instructions in humility ; who from the 
banquets of patricians would presenile their lessons in abstinence ; 
and from the primrose path of dalliance would point to the steep 
and thorny way to heaven. Monstrous as the opulence of the estab- 
lishment now is, the people of Ireland would rather see the wealth 
of Protestant bishops increased tenfold, and another million of acres 
added to their episcopal territories, than behold their pure and 
simple priesthood degraded from their illustrious humility to that 
dishonorable and anti-Christian ostentation Avhich, if it were once 
established, would be sure to characterize their church. I speak the 
sentiments of the whole body of my countrymen, when I solemnly 
and emphatically reiterate my asseveration that there is nothing 
which the Roman Catholic body would regard with more abhorrence 
than the transfer of the enormous and corrupting revenues of the 
establishment to a clergy who owe their virtues to their poverty and 
the attachment of the people to their dignified dependence upon the 
people for their support. 

I sliould have done ; and yet before I retire from your presence, 
indulge me so far as to permit me to press one remaining topic upon 



514 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

you. I have endeavored to sliow you tliiit you have mistaken the 
character and political principles of my religion ; I have endeavored 
to make you sensible of the misei'able condition of my country ; to 
impress upon you the failure of all the means which have been 
hitherto tried to tranquillize that unhappy country, and the necessity 
of adopting some expedient to alleviate its evils. I have dwelt upon 
the concuri'ence of great authorities in favor of concession ; the little 
danger that is to be apprehended from that concession, and the great 
benefit which would arise fnmi religious peace in Ireland. I might 
enlai'ge upon tliosc benefits, and show you that when factions were 
reconciled, when the substantial causes of animosity were removed, 
the fierce passions which agitate the country would be laid at rest*, 
that English capital would, in all likelihood, flow into Ireland ; that 
English habits would gradually arise ; that a confidence in the admin- 
istration of justice would grow up ; that the people, instead of 
appealing to arms for redress, would look to the public tribunals as 
the only arl)iters of right ; and that the obstacles which now stand in 
the way of education would be removed ; that the fierceness of 
polemics would be superseded by that charity which the Christian 
extends to all mankind ; that a reciprocal sentiment of kindness 
would take place between the two islands ; that a real union, not 
depending upon acts of parliament, but upon mutual interest and 
affection, would be permanently established; that the empire would 
be consolidated, and all dangers from the enemies of Great Britain 
would disappear : I might point out to you, what is obvious enough, 
that if Ireland be allowed to remain as it now is, at no distant 
period the natural foes of Great Britain may make that unfortunate 
country the field of some formidable enterprise ; I might draw a 
picture of the consequences which would arise if an enormous popu- 
lation wei'e to be roused into a concurrent and sinmltaneous move- 
ment, but I forbear from pressing such considerations upon you, 
because I had much rather rely upon your own lofty-mindedness, 
than ujion any terrible contingency ; I therefore put it to 3'ou, that 
independently of every consideration of expediency, it is unworthy 
of you to persevere in a system of practical religious intolei-ance^ 
which Roman Catholic states, who hold to you a fine example in this 
regard at least, have abandoned, I have heard it said that the 
Catholic religion was a persecuting religion. It was, and so was 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 515 

every other religion that was ever invested with authority. How 
easily I could retort on you the charge of persecution ; remind you 
that the eady reformers, who set up a claim to liberty of conscience 
for themselves, did not indulge others in a similar kixury ; tell you 
that Calvin, having obtained a theological masterdom in Geneva, 
offered up the screams of Servetus to the God of mercy and of love ; 
that even your own Cranmer, who was himself a mart}^, had first 
inflicted what he afterwards suffered, and that this father of your 
church, whose hand was indeed a guilty one, had, even in the reio-n 
of Edward the Sixth, accelerated the progress of heretics to immor- 
tality, and sent them through fire to heaven. But the truth is, that 
both parties have, in the paroxyms of religious frenzj', committed 
the most execrable crimes, and it might be difiicult, if their misdeeds 
were to be weighed, to adjust the balance of atrocity between them. 
But Catholics and Protestants have changed, and with the alteration 
of time we ourselves have undergone a salutary reformation. 
Through the whole continent religious distinctions have begun to 
vanish, and freedom of conscience is almost universally established. 
It is deplorable that England should be almost the only country 
where such disqualifications arc maintained. In France, where the 
religion of the state is that of Rome, all men are admissible to 
power, and no sort of sectarian distinction is instituted by the law. 
The third article of the French charter provides that every French 
citizen, no matter of what denomination, shall be capable of holding 
every office in the state. The Chamber of Deputies is filled with 
Protestants, who are elected by Eoman Catholics ; and Protestants 
have held places in the cabinet of France. In Hungary, in the year 
1791, Protestants were placed by a Roman Catholic government on 
a perfect level with their fellow-citizens. In Bavaria the same prin- 
ciple of toleration was adopted. Thus the Catholics of Europe have 
given you an honorable example, and, while they have refuted the 
imputation of intolerance, have pronounced upon you a practical 
reproach. You are behind almost evciy nation in Europe. Protest- 
ant Prussia has emancipated her Catholic subjects, and Silesia is 
free. In Germany the churches are used indiscriminately by Pro- 
testants and Catholics, the Lutheran service, in happy succession, 
follows the Catholic mass, or the Catholic mass follows the Lutheran 
service. Thus in every state in Europe the spirit of religious tolera- 



516 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tion has signally advanced, while here, in this noble island, which 
we are wont to consider the asylum of civil liberty, the genius of 
persecution has found a refuge. In England, and in England only, 
deprivations and dishonor are inflicted upon those w^hose conscience 
inhibits their conformity with the formulas of your worship, and a 
vast body of Englishmen in this one of your finest counties, are 
called upon to otier up a gratuitous invocation to the legislature to 
rivet the fetters of their Catholic fellow-subjects. Do not undertake 
so ungenerous an ofBce, nor interpose for the low-hearted purposes 
of oppression. I have heard since I came here that it is a familiar 
saying, that "the men of Kent have been never conquered." That 
you never will be vanquished in any encounter where men shall be 
arrayed in arms against you is my belief and my desire, but while 
in this regard you will always prove unconquered and unconquer- 
able, there is one j^iU'ticulsir in which I hope that proof will be 
afforded that you can be subdued. Be no longer invincible, but let 
the victory be achieved by yourselves. The worst foes with which 
you have to contend are lodged in your own breasts — your preju- 
dices are the most formidable of your antagonists, and to discomfit 
them will confer upon j-ou a higher honor than if in the shouts of 
battle you put 3'our enemies to flight. It is over your antipathies, 
national and religious, that a masterdom should be obtained I)}' you, 
and you may rest assured that if you shall vanquish your animosities, 
and bring your passions into subjection, you will, in conquering 
yourselves, extend your dominion over that country by which you 
have been so long resisted, your empire over our feelings will be 
securely established, you will make a permanent acquisition of the 
aflfectious of Irishmen, and make our hearts your own. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 517 



Speech in Reply to Mr. M'Clintock. * 



Mr. M'Clintock, a Protestant gentleman of rank and fortune in the county of 
Louth, having attended a Roman Catholic Meeting, held in the chapel of Dundalk, 
and delivered a speech containing strictures on the Catholic religion, 

nR. SHEIL rose immediately after Mr. M'Clintock had con- 
cluded and said, The speech of Mr. M'Clintock (and a more 

E4) singular exhibition of gratuitous eloquence I have never 
f^ts^: heard) calls for a prompt and immediate expression of 

* gratitude. He has had the goodness to advise us (for he 
has our interests at heart) to depute certain emissaries from the 
new Order of Liberators to his Holiness at Rome, for the purpose 
of procuring a repeal of certain obnoxious canons of the Council of 
Laterau. If INIr. M'Clintock had not assured us that he was seri- 
ous, and was not actuated by an anxiety to throw ridicule upon the 
religion and proceedings of those whom he has taken under his spir- 
itual tutelage, I should have been disposed to consider him an insid- 
ious fanatic, who, under the hypocritical pretence of giving us a 
salutary admonition, had come here with no other end than to fling 
vilification upon our creed, and to throw contumely upon the per- 
sons who take the most active pai't in the conduct of our cause. 
But knowing him to be a person of high rank and large fortune, 
.and believing him to possess the feelings as well as the station of a 
gentleman, I am willing to acquit him of any such unworthy pur- 
pose, and do not believe that his object in addres.sing us, was to 
offer a deliberate and premeditated insult. He did not, I am sure 
(for it would be inconsistent with the character which I have ascribed 
to him) enter this meeting for the purpose of ventiug his bile in our 
faces, and voiding upon his auditory the foul calumnies against the 
religion of his countrymen, which furnish the ordinary materials of 



518 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

rhetoric in the Bible Societies, of which he is so renowned a mem- 
ber. He did not come here to talk of the Pope's golden stirrups to 
a mass of ignorant and unenlightened people, and to turn their belief 
into ridicule with his lugubrious derision. The topics which he 
selected were, indeed, singularly chosen, and when he talked of the 
Order of Liberators, I was disposed to take him for a wag. — But 
I raised my eyes and looked him in the face, and perceiving a per- 
son, whose countenance would furnish Cruikshank with a frontis- 
piece to the Spiritual Quixote, I at once acquitted him of all 
jiropensities to humour, and could not bring myself to believe it 
possible that Mr. M'Clintock had ever intended to be droll. At one 
moment I confess I was in pain for him, for I was apprehensive 
that the language in which he expressed himself in regard to our 
clergy, and the forms and habitudes of Popery, would be apt to 
excite the indignation of a portion of this immense auditory, but 
the spirit of courtesy prevailed over the feelings of the people, and 
so far from having been treated with disrespect, he was listened to 
with more than ordinary indulgence. He excited less of our anger 
than of our commiseration. I am upon this account rejoiced that 
he should have undertaken an exploit of this kind. We have given 
him evidence, at all events, that however intolerant the theory of 
our religion may appear to him, we are practically forbearing and 
indulgent. We allowed him to inveigh against the bridle and sad- 
dle of the Pope, without a remonstrance ; we permitted him to 
indulge in his dismal merriment, and his melancholy ridicule, with- 
out a murmur ; he will thei'cfore have derived a useful lesson from 
his experiment upon the public patience, and when he shall recount 
to his confederates of the Bible Society his achievements amongst 
us, he will have an opportunity of telling them that we are far more 
tolerant of a difference of opinion than the pious auditory which Mr. 
M'Clintock is in the habit of addressing. I have occasionally 
attended meetings of the Bible Society, and observed that whoever 
ventured to remonstrate against the use of the Apocalypse as a 
Spelling Book, incurred the indignation of the assembly. I remem- 
ber to have heard it suggested, that the amatory pictures which are 
offered to the imagination in the Canticle of Canticles, were not 
exactly fitted to the private meditation of young ladies, when the 
countenances of the fair auditoi's immediately assumed an expression 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 519 

of beautiful ferocity, and they looked like angels in a passion. 
Henceforth, however, Mr. M'Cliutock may be able to x-efer to the 
example of his Roman Catholic auditors in recommending to his 
pretty votaries at the Bible Society, that meekness and forbearance 
of which the Roman Catholic ladies have this day afforded a model. 
In this view the exhibition of Mr. M'Clintock may be considered as 
likely to be productive of some utility. But, after ^having thus 
endeavored to convey to him an expression of the gratitude which 
■we feel for this interpositiou of his advice, it is right that I should, 
after giving him every credit for the benevolent sincerity of his 
motives, exnmine into the details of his admonition, and endeavor 
to ascertain how far it is judicious upon our part to follow the 
course which ho has taken on himself to point out ; let me, however, 
he allowed to make; one preliminary remark. On rising he informed 
us, that he merely obeyed the impulse of the moment and yielded 
to the sudden suggestions of the Spirit, in communicating his advice. 
I was not a little surprised that ho immediately afterwards pro- 
duced a series of voluminous extracts from the theological history 
of the Catholic Church, which, together with certain facetious ref- 
erences to the Cardinals, constituted the substance of his discourse. 
In any other man I should take this elaborate accumulation of eccles- 
iastical learning as evidence that he had made some preparation for 
a, somewhat adventurous enterprise, and that lie had come furnished 
with a panoply from the armory of heaven. I should have supposed 
that he had taken some time in collecting so many weapons of celes- 
tial temper. But Mr. M'Clintock is a peculiar favorite above ; he 
was supplied, no doubt, with these valuable notes by a preternatu- 
ral means ; some angelic influence must have been exercised in his 
favor, and a hand invisible to our profaner eyes, furnished him on 
the instant with those large extracts from the Canons of the Council 
of Lateran. 

[Here Mr. M'Clintock rose with some appearance of displeasure, and said that 
Mr. Shell was misrepresenting him. He stated that he had the notes for some time 
in his pocket.] 

Mr. Shell — I certainly had understood that Mr. M'Clintock 
intimated that he had come without preparation to this meeting. I 
am now, however, to understand that he is not indebted for his 



520 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

recondite erudition to any sudden irradiation from heaven, but that 
he previously accumulated this mass of citations against Popery. 
Indeed, the external aspect of the document sustains his present 
allegation, for the " Sybilline leaves" which were produced by him, 
seemed a little sear and faded. I perceive that Mr. M'Ciintock 
does not take the remarks which I have presumed to make in very 
good part. . In the Evangelical Societies where he makes so con- 
si^icuous a figure, he has it all his own way. He is not much accus- 
tomed to the collisions of intellect which are incident to popular 
dcl)ate ; but he must not expect that a person having so much vene- 
ration as I have for the Pope's bridle and saddle, to which he has 
adverted with such a pleasant unction, should not return his compli- 
ment to my religion and give him a few hints upon his own. Mr. 
M'Ciintock is no ordinary person. He is the imcle of Lord Roden, 
and the near relative of Lord Oriel ; he is, besides, nearly allied to 
the Archbishop of Tuam, of Biblical renown, and has obtained no 
little notoriety by his epistolary controversies with Doctor Curtis. 
The observations of such a man ought not to be allowed to pass 
without comment; I shall, therefore, pi-oceed. Mr. M'Ciintock 
recommends us to procure a repeal of the Canons of the Council of 
Lateran. I am apprehensive that Mr. M'Ciintock has blinded him- 
self Avith the dust of those ponderous folios which he must needs 
have studied, in order to exhibit such a forrago of theology as he 
has produced to-day. The Councils of Nice, of Constance, of Lat- 
eran, and of Trent, are as familiar to him as " household words." 
He has thrown them into what the lawyers call a hotch-potch 
together. I shall not undertake to follow him through so much 
dark and mj^sterious erudition ; but, at the same time, I shall grap- 
ple with the principle upon which his reference to the Councils are 
founded. He tells us that we ought to procure a repeal of the 
denunciations against heresy before we can expect emancipation. I 
beg leave to suggest the propriety of putting Mr. M'Ciintock into 
Parliament in place of his kinsman, Mr. Leslie Foster, in order to 
enable him to move for a repeal of the laws against witchci'aft, 
passed by a Protestant Legislature in the reign of James I. Thus a 
three-fold object will bo attained. We shall, in the first place, get 
rid of Mr. Leslie Foster ; in the second place we shall reward Mr. 
M'Ciintock for his well-meant admonitions ; and in the third place 



KICIIARD LALOR SlIEIL. 521 

we shfill afford an opportunity to Mr. M'Clintock of giving the same 
earnest cxhoi'tations to his fellow-legislators to relieve their religion 
from the odium with which the enactments of superstition ought to 
be pursued. But let me put the language of mockery aside, and 
ask Mr. M'Clintock whether it be not as unjust to charge the Cath- 
olics of the nineteenth century with edicts passed some centuries 
ago, as it would be to impute to the Protestant religion the fanati- 
cal absurdity which dictated the statute agaiust the " feeders of evil 
spirits." It is perfectly obvious that Mr. M'Clintock has conveyed 
a charge of intolerance in the shape of advice. He deserves a seri- 
ous answer. I shall, in the first place, point out the circumstances 
under which any denunciations against heresy were pronounced by 
the assembled hiei-archy of the Christian world. I shall show, in 
the second pjace, that the spirit of Protestantism was, at one period, 
fully as sanguinary and ferocious as that which Mr. M'Clintock has 
ascribed to the genius of Popery, in what he might call the night of 
its darkest domination. And I shall give proof to Mr. M'Clintock 
in the third place, that while the faith of Eoman Catholics remains 
unchanged, the principles by which the civil executive enforced an 
uniformity of creed have been long since abandoned. 

If, like Mr. M'Clintock, I were a reader of Saint Peter without 
note or comment I might refer him to the second chapter, in which 
he speaks of "false teachers who shall bring in damnable heresies"; 
but I know that Mr. M'Clintock has no great relish for St. Peter, or 
for his successors. The Roman Catholic divines were sufEciently 
fluent in quoting the authority of the Scriptures, when the State 
deemed it expedient to call their sanction in aid of the enactments 
of civil policy. Good warrant for the writ, "de hoBvetico coinburendo," 
might readily be found iu the Testament, both Old and New. But 
I thank God that it was never a part of the faith of Roman Catholics, 
that the light of the Gospel ought to be propagated with the faggot, 
or that the darkness of heresy ought to be dispelled with the flames 
of an auto defe. There is a manifest distinction between faith, which 
consists of a belief in certain religious tenets, and the practical 
measures by which that faith is sought to be enforced. A belief in 
transubstantiation is a part of our creed, but the punishment of 
heresy is a matter not of belief but of regulation, and cannot be said 
to constitute any portion of the Roman Catholic faith. It is perfectly 



522 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

true, that at a period when the Roman Catholic religion was the only 
form under which Christianity was professed, a system of discipline 
was adopted, of which the object was to repress innovation, and it 
■would be easy to find many plausible arguments among Protestant 
divines in support of that restraint upon novelties in religion, which, 
under the pretence of preserving the repose of society, were intro- 
duced by the lawgivers of a darker age. The intimate connexion 
between the State and the Church, produced ordinances in the one, 
which were intended to be the props of the other. By a reciprocity 
of corruption, they infe.cted each other — statesmen were turned into 
divines, and divines into statesmen. This was an unnatural trans- 
formation, and produced the worst results. If we enter into a com- 
parison of the enormities committed by the Catholics in opposing, or 
the Protestants in extending the doctrines of the Reformation, per- 
haps it would be difficult to strike a balance of atrocity between 
them. If any excuse could be urged (but there can bo none) it 
might be suggested on the part of the professors of the old i-eligion 
that they were, to use a legal illustration, in possession of the estate, 
and opposed to every casual ejector, who came to trespass on their 
■exclusive property in heaven. The Protestants who throw imputa- 
tions on our Church, should consider the position from which their 
projectiles ai'e flung, and should remember that they live in houses 
of brittle materials. It is notorious that almost, with the single ex- 
ception of Melancthon, all the earlier Reformers were infuriated 
persecutors. After hunting Pojjery down, they turned like mad 
wolves upon each other. The progress of the Reformation is tracked 
with fire and bloo.d. It is unnecessary to go through the details of 
enormity on the Continent, but as Mr. M'Clintock seems to belong to 
the Calvinistic department of Christianity (I should so collect from 
his aspect) he will pardon me for referring him to Geneva, that me- 
tropolis of oi'thodoxy, for illustrations of the peaceful and forbearing 
spirit with which the Fathers of the Reformed Religion enforced 
their revelations. They tortured, they emboweled, they consumed 
with slow fires whoever presumed to question their delegation from 
heaven. But let us turn to England. It is but a few days since I 
perused a letter by that martj'r of the Reformation, the detestable 
Cranraer, in which he writes, that inasmuch as one Fryth did not 
think it necessary to believe in the corporal presence of Christ in the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 523 

Sacrament, and held, in this point, much aftei- the opinion of CEco- 
lampadius, it was necessary to hand him over to the secular power, 
""where," as Cranmer says, "he, Fryth, looked every day to go to 
the fire." Well might he exclaim, " this guilty hand " ; well might 
the Patriarch of the Reformation, while he was himself perishing at 
the stake, utter that terrific cry ; but he should have applied it, not 
to the recantation of his opinions, but to the sanguinary misdeeds to 
which that hand had given its sanction. If the mother of Fryth had 
stood beside him, might she not have cried, "Your groans are like 
the groans of my son, and your screams remember me of his cries." 
But why refer to Cranmer, when I may resort to the amiable and 
benevolent Henry, the Father of the English Eeformation. Protes- 
tants disclaim that celebrated Prince ; but really they should be held 
responsible for his barbarities, when they impute to us every delin- 
quency practiced by the professors of our creed. Let them deny it 
as they will ; if we trace the Protestant religion to its fountain head, 
however it may have been purified in its progress, we shall find its 
sources stained with blood. But perhaps Mr. M'Clintock will say, 
that it pleased Providence to choose an imworthy instrument, in the 
ferocious Henry, for the accomplishment of its sacred purposes ; and 
that when we find the cradle of their religion rocked in murder, 
adultery, and incest, we see an exemplification of the tendency of 
Heaven to deduce good from ill. It must be confessed, that Provi- 
dence displayed a somewhat fantastic and capricious taste in choosing 
an execrable tyrant for the execution of his holy designs. It may 
he said, that the light only dawned in the mind of Henr}' ; that the 
Spirit did not visit him in its fullest illumination ; and that although 
the morning of the Reformation was dark and gloomy, and many a 
bloody cloud attended the ascending luminary, yet that in a little 
■while the truth appeared in all its glory, and spread into the full 
splendor of day. Well, let me pass at once to the 27th of Elizabeth, 
by which it was enacted, that " every Romish Priest should be hanged 
until he was half dead, then he should have his head taken off, and 
his body cut in quarters ; that his bowels should be drawn out and 
burned, and his head fixed upon a pole in some public place." What 
will Mr. M'Clintock say to this? Does he think the charge of intol- 
ei'ance is justly confined to the religion of Rome? I will not pursue 
the spirit of persecution through the variety of legislative enactments 



521: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

in which it is exemplified. What need I do more than refer to the 
Penal Code enacted in this country, by which the son was incited to 
revolt against the father, and parricide was converted into a sort of 
political duty by the law. It was of this code that Sir Toby Butler 
said, "It is enough to make the hardest heart bleed to think on't." 
It would be an almost endless labor to go through all the proofs, with 
which history may be said to teem, of the ferocious spirit by which 
sectarian power has been almost uniformly displayed. I can readily 
produce gibbet for gibbet against Mr. M'Clintock ; and the only dif- 
ference between us would be, that Catholics had a larger field for the 
exercise of that unfortunate tendency, which appears to belong to 
the nature of man. The Protestants, however, made good use of 
their time. The truth is, both parties are to blame, and should 
avoid this recriminating retrospect. How much more wise it would 
be of Mr. M'Clintock, instead of referring us to the Council of La- 
teran, to refer his fellow-believers to the progi-ess of events, to the 
universal diifusion of intelligence, and the material change which 
the religion both of Catholics and of Protestants has undergone. 
The sphere of human knowledge has advanced, and the Catholic 
Church has been carried along in the universal progression. Our 
faith is the same, but our system of ecclesiastical govenimcnt is 
wholly changed. Persecution cannot be considered as an ingredient 
of a man's creed. It may, indeed, be the result of his principles, 
but cannot be considered as of the essence of his belief. It were 
wiser for Mr. M'Clintock to look at the declarations of the Catholic 
Universities, denying the abominable doctrines imputed to us, — to 
the recent protest of the Catholic Bishops of Ireland, and to the oath 
which every Eoman Catholic takes, than to the moth-eaten volumes 
with which he has been replenishing his mind. Let him beware of 
these studies — "the insect takes the color of the leaf upon which it 
feeds," and I know of no worse color than the black letter repertories, 
of theology which have supplied liis intellectual nourishment. But 
let us go bej'Ond protests, and oaths, and declarations, and come to 
facts. The liberality of Catholics is not confined to mere speculation. 
Look at Hungary, where, for upwards of forty years, all distinctions 
between Protestant and Catholic have been abolished. Mr. M'Clin- 
tock has, en passant, inveighed against Charles X. and the Jesuits. 
Poor gentleman, he has the same fear of the Jesuits as Scrub in the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 525 

play, who rushes out in agony of terror, and exclaims, " Murder ! 
robbery ! the Fope and the Jesuits ! " It is not my office to defend 
the intellect of Charles X. I believe that if the brains of Protestant 
and Catholic royalty were to be weighed, the scales would be found 
in a state of complete equipoise. I hardly think that the Guelphs 
would weigh the Capets to the beam, and if the head of his Eoyal 
Highness the Duke of York were to be examined by Professor Spur- 
zbeim, he would, probably, find in it an equally faithful exemplifica- 
tion of his theory. On the head of the Duke of Cumberland, 
indeed, some bumps, as they are technically called, might be dis- 
covered, which the ghost of Selis should be conjured to explain. 
But a truce to laughter. Protestants complain of the intolerant 
spirit of the French law. In the first place the Huguenots are pro- 
vided with churches at the jaublic expense. In the Rue St. Honore, 
in Paris, they have a splendid place of worship given them by the 
State, and their clergy are not only paid as well, but much better, 
than the Eoman Catholic ecclesiastics. They receive one-third more. 
Let Mr. M'Clintock look to the French charter, and he will find 
that by the third article, " all Frenchmen are equally admissible to all 
civil and military employments," and by the fifth, " each individual is 
allowed to profess his religion with an equal freedom, and obtains 
for his form of worship, the same protection." But all these argu- 
ments, derived both from reason and from ftict, have no weight, as 
long as we consider the Pope infallible. Mr. M'Clintock informs us, 
that no human being is exempt from frailty, and refers to King David, 
and the interesting story of Bathsheba. He has also quoted the 
uxorious propensities of his son. 

Mr. M'Clintock seems well versed in the Old Testament, and 
apjiears well qualified to make elegant extracts of its more enticing 
incidents for the meditation of young ladies. They would make a 
neat volume, especially if adorned with prints, and some fair devotee 
well skilled in drawing should be applied to, to throw her imagina- 
tion into the pencil, and furnish illustrations. A pretty subject that 
of David and Bathsheba, to which Mr. M'Clintock has adverted. 
He passed with much rapidity of transition to his holiness, and I own 
I expected a few anecdotes of the Borgina family, to beguile the 
tedium of debate. However, he confined himself to the equestrian 
habitudes of his holiness. I beg to apprise Mr. M'Clintock that I, 



526 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

for one, do not consider the Pope infallible, nor is such an opinion 
entertained in our church. Roman Catholics indeed believe that 
truth resides in their church, as most people believe their own to be 
the best religion. Mr. M'Chntock will allow me to interpret the 
Scriptures as I think proper. St. Paul and he diifer, indeed, on 
that head, as St. Paul condemns "private interpretation." But I 
meet Mr. M'Clintock on his own ground, and tell him that I find 
texts in Scripture which, according to my private construction, war- 
rant a belief in the infalhbility of the church. I may be wrong, but 
I deduce that position from the Scriptures, and the first use I make 
of them is, to bow down my judgment to the church. I need not 
repeat the te-xt : "Thou art Peter." "Lo, I will be with you to the 
end of time," and so forth. I by no means insist on Mr. M'Clintock 
adopting my construction, but upon his own principles, he must not 
quarrel ^Yith the inference which I draw from the Eible. I have as- 
much right to draw that conclusion from the Bible as he has to 
believe in his election from eternity, which he derives from the same 
source. Why, then, should I be debarred of my civil rights for 
believing that truth must reside somewhere, and for choosing to give 
it a residence in the Catholic church, instead of the bottom of a well. 
At all events, the arguments on my side are plausible enough to 
have imposed on many great and good men, and I must be pardoned 
for following, like Mr. M'Clintock, my own vagary in religion. 
There is, in my mind, this difference between Mr. M'Clintock and 
myself. I believe the church to be infallible, and he believes him- 
self to be so. 

Mr. M'Clintock — Not at all. 

iMr. Shell — I shall show Mi'. M'Clintock that this conclusion is 
the necessary consequence of his premises. If every Protestant is 
entitled to draw his religion from the Bible, it follows that he must 
be capable sy to do. If he be capable so to do, he must be enlight- 
ened by heaven, and if enlightened by heaven, as God does not lead 
us astra}', he must be infallible. A member of the Bible Society 
gives the Scriptures to his child, and desires him to make out his 
faith from them. "Here, (ho saj^s), my sweet little divine, is the 
Book of Life, do not attend to what the priests and cardinals tell 
you, but study the Trinity by yourself; investigate the mystery of 
the Incarnation, and solve the prophetical problems of the Apocalypse ; 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 527 

and, my clear boy, if ever you are in want of amusement, read the 
pleasant story of David and Bathsheba, and the other instructive 
anecdotes which you will find interspersed in this holy book ; God 
will preserve j'our imagination from taint, and fill with his divine 
grace every little theologian of thirteen. And now good bye, and 
go and play with the gospel at 'hide and go seek.'" So much for 
divinity in its teens. But seriously speaking, if the boy be not 
infallible, why give the Bible to the boy? It comes to this : I am 
for corporate, and Mr. M'Clintock for individual infallibility. I 
prefer the decrees of councils ; he prefers the rhapsodies of conventi- 
cles. I like the religion of Pascal, and Fenelon, and Bossuet, and 
Arnaud, while Mr. M'Clintock and the ladies of Dublin have a pre- 
dilection for the new apostle of the Gentiles — Baron Munchausen 
Katerfelto Ferdinand Mendcz Pinto Wolff, formerly of Monmouth 
street, London, lately of the Propaganda in Rome, and now Chief 
Propagator to the Ladies' Auxiliary Bible Society, Dublin. Kirwan 
used to say, that the teachers of new religions were like the soldiers 
who tore the seamless garment of our Saviour to pieces. This con- 
verted Hebrew, after selling old clothes thi'ough Germany, comes 
hawking some shreds of new-fashioned Christianity in Dublin. The 
fellow's name and aspect reminds me of Dryden's description of the 

fanatics : 

Move haughty than the rest, the Wolffish race — 
Appear with belly gaunt and famished face — 
Never was so deformed a beast of grace. 

I commend Mr. M'Clintock to this worthy missionary from Syria, 
of whose infallibility and fidelity in the commemoration of his own 
wonders, I presume he makes no question, and gives him a decided 
preference to Prince Hohenloe. Good heaven ! to what a pitch 
fanaticism has arrived ! An ignorant Israelite arrives in Dublin, 
defies all the doctors of the Church of Rome, in the world, to meet 
him in intellectual combat, directs that answers should be inclosed 
from all the universe to Mr. Hogan, of York street, and is forthwith 
encompassed with all the rank and beauty of Dublin. Warren, with 
his blacking, is nothing to this ; and Ingleby, "the emperor of con- 
jurors," who defied every other juggler, sinks into miserable diminu- 
tion before this master of celestial legerdemain. But, sir, enough 
of these topics, which are very foreign from those on which I had 



528 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

intended to address you. Mr. M'Clintock has broken in upon the 
ordinary course of our discussions, and has, perhaps, enlivened this 
meeting with some diversity of matter. I hope we shall often see 
bim amongst us, and that some of his associates of the Bible Society 
will do us the favor to accompany him ; for, although we are greatly 
surpassed by them in the riches of diction, extent of acquirement, 
grace of elocution, and power of reasoning, yet the truth upon our 
side almost renders us their match. Having spoken thus much, I 
shall not enter into any of the subjects suggested by your resolu- 
tions, but shall content myself with simply stating, that for the vote 
of thanks you have given me for my professional exertions at the 
election, to the success of which you are pleased to say that I con- 
tributed, I am deeply grateful. 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 529 



Speech on the Duke of York. 



'^i HAVE waited until tho chair had been left, and the meeting of 
1^ the Association had terminated, in order to introduce a suliject 

f which, as it is of a purely political nature, I refrained from 
mentioning during the discussions of the Association, lest it 
should give them a character of illegality, and expose me to the 
imputation of having violated the law. 1 refer to the recent obser- 
vations which have been made in the London papers upon the 
report of a speech of mine at a public dinner. I hope that I shall 
not be considered guilty of an overweening egotism, in drawing the 
attention of the individuals who happen to be assembled here to 
what may appear to relate to myself. But the topics on which I 
mean to addi'ess you are of public as well as of personal interest. 
The truculent jocularity and the spirit of savage jest which have 
been ascribed to me, in expatiating on the infirmities of an illus- 
trious person, have been regarded as characteristic of the moral 
habitudes of the body to which I belong. Thus, my vmdication 
(for I dp not rise to make an apology) extends beyond myself. Yet 
let me be permitted to suggest, that it is most unliiir to impute to a 
whole people the feelings or the sentiments of any single man. The 
Catholics of Ireland have been repeatedly held responsible for the 
unauthorised and unsanctioned language of individuals. Every 
ardent expression, every word that ovei-flows with gall, every phrase 
uttered in the suddenness of unpremeditated emotion, are converted 
into charges against seven millions of the Irish people. It is deal- 
ing rather hardly with us, to make a loose after-dinner speech, (the 
mere bubble of the mind,) thrown off in the heedlessness of con- 
viviality, a matter of serious accusation against a whole community. 
I am not endeavoring to excuse myself upon any such plea as the 
Bishop of Kilmore might resort to, in extenuating his late oration in 



530 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Cavan ; on the contrary, I am prepared to show the circumstances 
■which, in my mind, gave warrant to what I said. Bnt I deprecate 
the notion that the language employed either by myself or by any 
other individual should be held to represent the opinions of the 
Irish Catholics. It has been stated that laughter was produced by 
an el)ullition of disastrous merriment. I will suppose that some two 
or tlu'ce dozen of individuals in an obscure country town, did not 
preserve the solemnity with which any allusion to the maladies of 
an illustrious person ought to have l)een received, yet it is wholly- 
unjust to hold the Irish Catholics responsible for their lack of sensi- 
bility. Having said this much, in order to rescue my fellow-labor- 
ors in the cause of emancipation from any responsibility for individual 
demerit, I shall proceed to state what, in my judgment, affords a 
justification of the language employed upon the occasion to which I 
refer. I shall not deny that I entertain a solicitude upon this sub- 
ject. It is affectation on the part of any man to say that he holds 
the censure of the press in no account. I cannot but be sensible 
that I am, from my comparative \vant of personal importance, more 
exposed to the injurious consequence of such a sinmltaneous assault. 
But I do not complain ; whoever intermeddles in public proceeding* 
must be prepared for occasional condemnation. It is one of the 
necessary results of notoi-icty, and I submit to it as a portion of my 
fate. I shall not, therefore, insinuate that thei'e is any mock senti- 
mentality in the amiable indignation with which the writers of the 
Whig journals have vented their censurrs upon what ttiey call the 
barbarous hilarity of an after-dinner harangue. I will not say that 
it is easy to procure a character for high sentiment by indulging in 
a paroxysm of editorial anger. Nay, I will give the gentlemen who 
have put so much sentiment into type credit for sincerity, and with- 
out attempting to retaliate, without referring them to their own 
comments upon the illustrious immoralities of the distinguished 
person to whom I have alluded, I shall state the grounds of which I 
conceive that I have been unjustly assailed. It is right that I should 
at once proceed to mention exactly what took place. The chairman 
of the meeting in question deviated from the ordinary usage at 
Roman Catholic dinners, and, in compliance with what, from his 
inexperience, he considered to be a sort of formula of convivial 
loyalty, proposed the health of a man who is an object, to use the 



RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 531 

mildest phrase, of strong national disrelisli. This, I confess, excited 
my indignation. I felt indignation, and where is the man who has 
one drop of manly blood in his heart, who would not feel indigna- 
tion at being called on to offer a public homage to the individual 
■who "has an oath in heaven" against his country. I was tempted 
at first to remonstrate in the language of violent reproof against 
such an obnoxious toast, and I own that I felt it difficult to restrain 
the emotious which, in common with every Roman Catholic, I enter- 
tain towards the man who is the avowed and devoted antagonist of 
Ireland. I recollected, however, that the chairman had done no 
more than comply with what he conceived to be a mere form, and I, 
therefore, preferred a mockery of the sentiment to any solemn 
denunciation. To the toast the expression of a hope was annexed,, 
that with the restoration of health his feelings towards this countrj'^ 
should undergo an alteration. "My gorge rose" at the notion of ss 
man whose hereditary obstinacy has been confirmed by an adjura- 
tion of his God, becoming a valetudinarian convert to liberal opin- 
ions. The transition from anger to derision is an easy one, and I 
could not help indulging in tlie luxury of scorn (for it is not without 
its gratification,) and in the spirit of a gay malevolence, but not of 
heartless ridicule, I stated that I did not despair of seeing a consum- 
mation of the pious aspirations in which I had been called to join, 
when I recollected that protestations in politics might be as flcetino- 
as those in love, and that as ''Jove laughs at lover's perjuries," I 
apprehended an unfortunate stability in "so help me God !" It was 
not unnatural that in this mood of unpremeditated mockery I should 
make citations from certain celebrated epistles, where vows of ever- 
lasting attachment were succeeded by infidelities of so much infeli- 
citous renown. The report of what I said was not full, and although 
I do not affect to say that the expressions imputed to me were not 
used, yet they are presented to the public eye without much con- 
comitant matter, which would show them in, perhaps, a different 
light. I am sorry that the references to those celebrated letters 
were omitted. The following were among the passages to which I 
alluded, and which I think will bear me out — "How can I sufB- 
ciently express to my sweetest, my darling love, the deh'ght which 
her dear, her pretty letter gave me — millions of thanks for it, my 
angel. Doctor O' delivered your letter. He wishes much to 



532 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

preach before royalty, and if I can put hira in the way of it I will. 
What a time it appears to me, my darling, since we parted, and how 
impatiently I look forward to next Wednesday night. God bless 
you, my dear love ; ah ! believe me, even to my last hour, yours, 
and yours alone." Thus, you perceive, that his atfection was sealed 
with as strong a vow as his antipathy. The next letter .gives vent 
to still more impetuous emotions. " How can I express to my dar- 
ling love my thanks for her dear, dear letter. Oh ! my angel, do 
me justice, and be convinced that thei'e never was a woman adored 
as you are. There are still, however, two whole nights before I 
shall clasp my dear angel in my arms. Claverlng is mistaken, my 
dear, in thinking there are any new regiments to be raised. (There- 
by hangs a tale.) Thanks, my love, for the handkerchiefs, which 
ai'e delightful, and I need not, I trust, assure you of the pleasure I 
feel in wearing them, and thinking of the dear hands who made 
them for me. Adieu, my sweetest love, until the day after to-mor- 
row ; and be assured, that until my last hour, I shall remain yours, 
and yours alone." It would be doing injustice to the celebrated 
writer of these exotic effusions if I did not add that his recommenda- 
tion of an Irish divine was fully justified by the result, for the 
"Morning Post" mentions that while the doctor, with the Irish 
Omega in his name, was preaching, the father of the illustrious 
individual was very attentive, and his mother and sisters were 
melted into tears. There is an amusement of a demi-literary kind, 
commonly called " cross rcadincf." I have sometimes put the " so 
help me God" oration into juxtaposition with the amatory lucubra- 
tions from which I have given a few extracts, and the reading stood 
thus: "It was connected with the serious illness of one now no 

more. Doctor O' wishes much to preach before royalty. I 

have never seen any reason to regret or change the line which I 
then took." "Oh ! my angel, do me justice, and be convinced that 
there never was a woman adored as you are — there are still , how- 
ever, two whole nights before I can clasp my angel in my arms." 
I feel very strongly on the whole subject — " ten thousand thanks, 
my love, for the handkerchiefs, which are delightful." Here he 
became sensibly affected. " I have been brought up all my life in 
these principles, and be assured that, to my last hour, I shall ever 
remain yours, and yours alone, 'so help me God ! '" This amalga- 



RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL. 533 

mation of his passions and his politics, in which his vices and his 
virtues are fused together, presents his character in a just light. 
But I should lay aside the language of derision. Why have I made 
these references to transactions, which l)ut for his relentless anti- 
pathies to 013' country, I should readily have forgotten? It is not 
in the spirit of wanton malignity and inglorious revenge. It is for 
the purpose of recalling to the commentators upon myself the period 
at which that illustrious person was an object of as much aversion in 
England as he is in Ireland at this day. It is for the purpose of 
branding his protestations about conscience with all the scorn which 
they merit; it is in order to exhibit, in their just light, his appeals 
to heaven ; to put his morality into comparison with his religion, 
and to tear off the mask by which the spirit of oppression is sought 
to be disguised. Conscience, forsooth ! It is enougb to make one's 
blood boil to think on't ! That he who had publicly and in the open 
common day thrown off every coverlet of shame — who had wal- 
lowed in the blackest stye of profligate sensuality, an avowed and 
ostentatious adulterer, whose harlot had sustained herself by the ' 
sale of commissions, and tiu-ned footmen into brigadiers ! that he — 
yet hot and reeking from the results of a foul and most disgraceful 
concubinage — should, without sense or memory or feeling, before 
the eyes of the whole empire, with the traces of his degradation 
still fresh upon him, pi-esume to call upon the name of the great 
and eternal God, and in all the blasphemy of sacrilegious cant, dedi- 
cate himself with an invocation of heaven to the everlasting opres- 
sion of my country ! This it is that sets me, and every Irish 
Catholic, on fire. This is it which raises, excites, inflames, and 
exasperates ! This it is that applies a torch to our passions. This 
it is that blows our indignation into flame. And it is this which, in 
the eyes of men, who stand the cold spectators of our sufferings and 
yield us a fastidious sympathy in our wrongs, makes us appear fac- 
tious, virulent, and ferocious. This it is which makes them think 
that our mouths are foaming with raljid froth, and that there is 
poison mixed with madness in our fangs. I will furnish our antag- 
onists with expressions of condemnation : I will assist their vocabu- 
lary of insult — I will allow them to heap contumel}' upon contumely, 
and reproach upon reproach, and I will oidy answer, that if they 
were similarly situated, tliey would feel with the same poignancy 



534 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and speak with the same turbulent virulence as ourselves, — I will 
only say, in the language of the great master of human nature — 

"You should not speak of what you cannot feel." 

They cannot feel our condition, or appreciate our injuries to their 
full extent, I cannot say the same thing of the illustrious person 
to whom I have alluded. He has been placed in circumstances some- 
what analogous. Good God ! that such a man should tell us that 
we labor under no privation, and are subject to no wrong ! What 
were his own feelings — how did his heart beat when he was driven 
by the loud and reiterated cries of the English people, from his 
high office ! We are told by him that an exclusion from the honors 
of tile State is no substantive injury. Did he forget his own letter to 
the House of Commons, in which he offered up an act of contrition 
for the consequences of his impure connection, and, acknowledging 
that his heart was almost broken, resigned his office ! Did tlie sac- 
rifice cost him no pang? Did the oblation which he made to the 
public feeling awake no painful sensation in his mind? Did not his 
cheek burn, and was not his face turned into scarlet, when he took 
the pen with a trembling hand (for it must have trembled) and signed 
the instrument of his resignation ! What a palsy must have seized 
his arm when he let the truncheon fall ! And if in that dreadful 
crisis he felt a deep agony of heart, should he not make some allow- 
ance for those who, for no other cause than a conscientious adherence 
to the religion m which they were born and trust to die, are excluded 
from those honors which are accessible to every other class of British 
subjects? What, then, is the charge against me? That I have not 
enough of Joseph Surface in my character to express a wish that the 
great obstacle to my liberty should not be removed ! My crime is, 
that I am not a hypocrite so base, as to allow a public libation to his 
name to pass without a comment. It was extorted from me, and my ob- 
servations were not dictated by any cold and delilierate malice towards 
the individual, but by the feeling of distaste which the announcement 
of such a toast produced in my mind. The sarcasm was directed to 
the sentiment and not to the man. With respect to the individual 
himself, I doubt not that in private life he is not destitute of good 
qualities. It is said that he is a person of honor, and of a kindly 
disposition. This I am not inclined to controvert ; and it would be 



KICIIARD LALOR SIIEIL. 535 

an injustice not to add, that in many particulars, in his official 
capacity, he is entitled to praise. Diligence, punctuality, and an 
attention to the interests of the inferior class of persons, who are 
placed under his superintendence, are among his merits. But what 
compensation does good nature afford for the denial of liberty? The 
mistakes of men in his condition are equivalent in their consequences 
to acts of deliberate criminality. Imbecility of understanding, and 
obstinacy of character, generate as many evil results as depravity of 
disposition, and, if I may employ the phrase, tyranny of heart. If 
I have adverted to conduct, which, in a court, is called foll}^ but 
which in lower departments of society is called vice, it is not that I 
am anxious to exaggerate those weaknesses wjiich exposed him to 
ridicule, into enormity. The absurdities in love, into which he fell, 
should rest in oblivion, if ho did not, by talking of the pain to which 
the royal conscience would be exposed, provoke a contrast l)etween 
his life and his protestations, and make us tear open the tattered 
curtains of concubinage, in order to draw arguments against him from 
an adulterous bed. Who, we inevitably ask, is the man who appeals 
to heaven ? Who is the man that entreats the house to consider the 
torture of conscience in which the sovereign is thus placed? Who 
is it that lifts up his hands and exclaims, "so help me God"? Is he 
a man of pure and unblemished life ? Is he a man of bright and 
immaculate morality ? Is he a man .distinguished for his fidelity to 
his pecuniary contracts, and who never allowed his humble creditors 
to be the victims of a licentious prodigality ? These are the inter- 
rogatories which this appeal to Almighty God necessarily forces upon 
us. We are rendered astute in the detection of errors, by the 
anxiety to find fault, and look into the life of such a person with 
a microscopic scrutiny. It is much to be regretted that he has ex- 
hibited a solicitude to l)e hated b}"^ the Irish people. He has lost no 
opportunity to gather about his name the antipathies of this country. 
Witness his having accepted the office of Grand Master of an illegal 
association of men, combined together for the oppression of their 
fellow-countrymen, and who, perverting the word of God into the 
signal of massacre, employed as a motto of their sanguinary institu- 
tion, " Thy foot shall be steeped in the blood of thine enemies, and 
the tongue of thy dog shall be red with the lapping thereof." Is it, 
then, to be expected, that, for the ex-Grand Master of an Orange 



536 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Lodge we should entertain much tenderness and anxiety, or that any 
man who has taken the active part which I have, in Catholic afTuirs, 
should allow his name, when held up as an object of sympathy, to 
pass without some reprehensive comment? I do not exult in any 
corporal suffering which he may endure. If he suffers pain, and it 
were in my power to alleviate it, I should obey the instincts of my 
nature, and, dismissing my political detestations, bear him relief. 
But if I am asked M'hether I should desire to see the misfoi'tunes of 
my country prolonged, I answer, " the liberty of Ireland is too dear." 
He is, beyond all doubt, the great obstacle to concession. What, 
then, do our opponents expect from us? If they require that excess 
of Christian philosophy, which should teach us to offer up our orisons 
for the degradation of our country, they ask too much. What would 
Catholic Emancipation produce ? It would promote a whole people 
to their just level in the State ; it would create tranquillity, and open 
the sources of national wealth in a land which is impoverished by 
its distractions ; it would bind us in harmony together, and put an 
end to those dissensions by which we are rent asunder, and by which 
all the charities of life are blasted ; it would remove that spirit of 
animosity and virulence which tills the hearts of men with the worst 
passions, and makes them turn with an emulation of hatred upon each 
other ; it would, in one word, produce a great and permanent national 
reconciliation, and fix the stability of the British empire upon an 
everlasting foundation. These would, in my mind, be the glorious 
results of Catholic Emancipation ; and I am only speaking the feel- 
ing of the whole Irish people, when I avow that I do not desire the 
perpetuation of the chief impediment that stands in its way, and thus- 
obstructs a consummation which every lover of his country must most 
devoutly wish. 



SELECT SPEECHES 



/ 

Right Hon. Henry Grattan. 



[637] 




^ x^5 


y/. 


.A. 


HON 


HENRY 


GRATTAN 



Declaration of Irish Rights, 



April 19, 1780. 

On this clay came on the most important subject that had ever been discussed in 
the Irish Parliament, — the question of independence — the recovery of that legis- 
lative power, of which, for centuries, Ireland had been so unjustly deprived. 

Her right to make laws for herself, was first afl'ected by the act of the 10th of 
Henry the Seventh, in a parliament, held at Drogheda, before the then Deputy, Sir 
Edward Poynings. It was there enacted that no parliament should be hoklen in 
Ireland, until the Lord-lieutenant and Privy Council should cei'tify to the King 
under the great seal of Ireland, the causes, considerations, and acts that were to 
pass ; that the same should be affirmed by the King and council in England, and his 
license to summon a parliament be obtained under the great seal of England. This 
■was further explained by the 3d and 4th of Philip and Mary, whereby any change or 
alteration in the form or tenor of such acts to be passed after they were returned 
fi'om England, was prohibited. Thus, by these laws the English privy council got 
the power to alter or suppress, and the Irish parliament were deprived of the power 
to originate, alter, or amend. 

By these acts were the legislative rights of Ireland Invaded : her judicial rights, 
however, remained untouched, till, in 1688, a petition and appeal was lodged with 
the House of Lords of England, from the English society of the new plantation of 
Ulster, complaining of the Irish House of Lords, who had decided in a case between 
them and the Bishop of Derry. Upon this the English House of Lords passed an 
order declaring, that this appeal was coram non judice. To this order fourteen 
reasons and answers were written by the celebrated Molyneux, and the appeal gave 
rise to his famous work, entitled "The Case of Ireland," which excited the hostility 
of the English House of Commons, and" was burned by the hands of the common 
■faangman ! The Irish House of Lords then asserted their rights, passed resolutions, 
and protested against the English proceedings ; thus matters remained until 1703, 
when came on the case of the Earl and Countess of Meath against the Lord Ward, 
who were dispossessed of their lands by a pretended order of the House of Lords in 
England, on which the Irish House of Peers adopted the former resolutions, assert- 
ing their rights, and restored possession to the Earl and Countess. In 1703, the 
appeal of Maurice Annesley was entertained in England, and the decree of the Irish 
House of Lords was reversed; and the English House of Lords had recourse to the 
authority of the Barons of the Exchequer in Ireland to enforce their order; the 
Sheritr refused obedience; the Irish House of Lords protected the Sheriff, and 
agreed to a representation to the King on the subject. This produced the arbitrary 
Jict of the 6th of George the First, which declared, that Ireland was a subordinate 



540 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and dependent kingdom; that the King, Lords, and Commons of England had' 
power to make Laws to bind Ireland ; that the House of Lords of Ireland had no 
jurisdiction, and that all proceedings before tliat Court were void. Under this act, 
and to such injustice, the Irish nation were compelled to submit, until the spirit of 
the present day arose, and that commanding power which the armed volunteers gave 
to the country, encouraged the people to rise unanimously against this nsurped^and 
tyrannical authority. The efforts of the nation to obtain a free trade, the compliance- 
of the British Parliament with that claim; the British act passed inconsequence 
thereof, which allowed the trade between Ireland and the British colonies and plan- 
tations in America and the West Indies, and the British settlements on the coast of 
Africa, had raised the hopes of the Irish people. The resolutions and proceedings 
of the volunteers, and the answers to their addresses by the patriotic members, had 
still further roused the people to a sense of their rights and their condition, and the 
hour was approaching which was to witness the restoration of their liberty. Mr. 
Grattan had, on a preceding day, given notice that he would bring forward a meas- 
ure regarding the rights of Ireland ; and in pursuance of that notice he rose and 
spoke as follows : 

^^IR, I have entreated an attendance on this day, that you might,. 
|@ in the most public manner, deny the claim of the British Par- 

f"" liament to make law for Ireland, and with one voice lift up 
3'our hands against it. 

If I had lived when the 9th of William took away the woollea 
manufacture, or when the Gth of George the First declared this 
country to be dependent, and subject to laws to be enacted by the 
Parliament of England, I should have made a covenant with my own 
conscience to seize the first moment of rescuing my country from the 
ignominy of such acts of power; or, if I had a son, I should have 
administered to him an oath that he would consider himself a person 
separate and set apart for the discharge of so important a duty ; upon 
the same principle I am now come to move a declaration of right, 
the first moment occurring, since my time, in which such a declara- 
tion could be made with any chance of success, and without ao-ora- 
vation of oppression. 

Sir, it must appear to every person, that, notwithstanding the 
import of sugar and export of woollens, the people of this country 
are not satisfied — something remains ; the greater work is behind ; 
the pul)lic heart is not well at ease. To promulgate our satisfaction ; 
to stop the throats of millions with the votes of Parliament ; to 
preach homilies to the volunteers ; to utter invectives against the 
people, under pretence of affectionate advice, is an attempt, weak, 
suspicious and inflammatory. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 54I 

You cannot dictate to those whose sense you are entrusted to 
represent ; your ancestors, who sat within these walls, lost to Ireland 
trade and liberty ; you, by the assistance of the people, have re- 
covered trade, you still owe the kingdom liberty ; she calls upon 
you to restore it. 

The gi'ound of public discontent seeins to be, " we have gotten 
commerce, but not freedom" : the same power which took away the 
export of woollens and the export of glass, may take them away 
again ; the repeal is partial, and the ground of repeal is upon a 
principle of expediency. 

Sir, expedient is a word of appropriated and tyrannical import ; 
expedient is an ill-omened word, selected to express the reservation 
of authority, while the exercise is mitigated ; expedient is the ill- 
omened expression of the Repeal of the American stamp-act^ Eng- 
land thought it expedient to repeal that law ; happy had it been for 
mankind, if, when she withdrew the exercise, she had not reserved 
the right ! To that reservation she owes the loss of her American 
empire, at the expense of millions, and America the seeking of liberty 
through a sea of bloodshed. The repeal of the woollen act, similarly 
circumstanced, pointed against the principle of our liberty, present 
relaxation, but tyranny in reserve, may be a subject for illumination 
to a populace, or a pretence for apostacy to a courtier, but cannot be 
the subject of settled satisfaction to a freeborn, an intelligent, and an 
injured community. It is therefore they consider the free trade as a, 
trade lie facto, not de jure, a license to trade under the Parliament 
of England, not a free trade under the charters of Ireland, as a 
tribute to her strength ; to maintain which, she must continue in a 
state of armed preparation, dreading the approach of a general peace, 
and attributing all she holds dear to the calamitous condition of the 
British interest in every quarter of the globe. This dissatisfaction, 
founded upon a consideration of the liberty we have lost, is increased 
when they consider the opportunity they are losing ; for if this nation, 
after the death-wound given to her freedom, had fallen on her knees 
in anguish, and besought the Almighty to frame an occasion in which 
a weak and injured people might recover their rights, prayer could 
not have asked, nor God have furnished, a moment more opportune 
for the restoration of liberty, than this, in which I have the honor 
to address you. 



542 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

England now smarts under the lesson of the American war ; the 
doctrine of Imperial legislature she feels to be pernicious ; the- 
revenues and monopolies annexed to it she has found to be untenable ; 
she lost the power to enforce it ; her enemies are a host, pouring' 
upon her from all quarters of tlie earth ; her armies are dispersed ; 
the sea is not hers ; she has no minister, no ally, no admiral, none in 
whom she long confides, and no general whom she has not disgraced ; 
the balance of her fate is in the hands of Ireland ; you are not only 
her last connection, you are the only nation in Europe that is not her 
enemy. Besides, there does, of late, a certain damp and spurious 
supineness overcast her arms and councils, miraculous as that vigor 
which has lately inspirited yours ; — for with you everything is the 
reverse ; never was there a parliament in Ireland so possessed of 
the confidence of the people ; you are the greatest political assembly 
now sitting in the world ; you are at the head of an immense army ; 
nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain 
unquenchable public fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a 
visitation. 

Tuni to the growth and spring of your country, and behold and 
admire it ; where do 3^ou find a nation who, upon whatever concerns 
the rights of mankind, expresses herself with more truth or force, 
jjerspicuity or justice? not the set phrase of scholastic men, not the 
tame unreality of court addresses, not the vulgar raving of a rabble, 
but the genuine speech of liberty, and the unsophisticated oratory of 
a free nation. 

See her military ardor, expressed not only in 40,000 men, con- 
ducted by instinct as they were raised by inspiration, but manifested 
in the zeal and promptitude of every 3'oung member of the growing 
community. Let corruption tremble ; let the enemy, foreign or 
domestic, tremble ; but let the friends of liberty rejoice at these 
means of safety and this hour of redemption. Yes ; there does exist 
an enlightened sense of rights, a young appetite for freedom, a solid 
strength, and a rapid fire, which not only put a declaration of right 
■vvithiu your power, but put it out of your power to decline one. 
Eighteen counties are at your bar ; they stand there with the compact 
of Henry, with the charter of John, and with all the passions of the 
people. "Our lives are at your service, but our liberties — we 
received them from God ; we will not resign them to man." Speak- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 543 

ing to you thus, if you repulse these petitioners, you abdicate tlie 
privileges of Parliament, forfeit the rights of the kingdom, repudiate 
the instruction of your constituents, bilge the sense of your country, 
palsy the enthusiasm of the people, and reject that good which not a 
minister, not a Lord North, not a Lord Buckinghamshire, not a Lord 
Hillsborough, but a certain pi-ovidential conjunctui-e, or rather the 
hand of God, seems to extend to you. Nor are we only prompted 
to this when we consider our strength ; we are challenged to it when 
we look to Gi'eat Britain. The people of that country are now 
waiting to hear the Parliament of Ireland speak on the subject of 
their liberty : it begins to be made a question in England whether 
the principal persons wish to be free : it was the delicacy of former 
parliaments to be silent on the subject of commercial restrictions, 
lest they should show a knowledge of the fact, and not a sense of the 
violation ; you have spoken out, you have shown a knowledge of the 
fact, and not a sense of the violation. On the contrary, you have 
returned thanks for a partial repeal made on a principle of power ; 
you have returned thanks as for a favor, and your exultation has 
brought your charters as well as your spirit into question, and tends 
to shake to her foundation your title to liberty : thus you do not 
leave your rights where you found them. You have done too much 
not to do more ; you have gone too far not to go on ; you have 
brought youi-selves into that situation, in which you must silently 
abdicate the rights of your country, or publicly restore them. It. is 
very true you may feed your manufacturers, and landed gentlemen 
may get their rents, and you may export woollen, and may load a 
vessel with baize, serges, and kerseys, and you may bring back 
again directly from the plantations, sugar, indigo, speckle-wood, 
beetle-root, and pauellas. But liberty, the foundation of trade, the 
charters of the land, the independency of Parliament, the securing, 
crowning, and the consummation of everything are yet to come. 
"Without them the work is imperfect, the foundation is wanting, the 
capital is wanting, trade is not free, Ireland is a colony without the 
benefit of a charter, and you are a provincial synod without the 
privileges of a parliament. 

I read Lord North's proposition ; I wish to be satisfied, but I am 
controlled by a paper, I will not call it a law, it is the sixth of George 
the First. [The paper was read.] I will ask the gentlemen of the 



.544 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

long robe is this the law ? I ask them whether it is not practice ? I 
appeal to the judges of the land, whether they are not in a course of 
declaring that the Parliament of Gi"eat Britain, naming Ireland, binds 
her? I appeal to the magistrates of justice, whether they do not, 
from time to time, execute certain acts of the British Parliament? 
I appeal to the officers of the army, whether they do not fine, confine, 
and execute their fellow-subjects by virtue of the Mutiny Act, an 
act of the British Parliament ; and I appeal to this House whether a 
country so circumstanced is free. Where is the fi-eedom of trade? 
where is the security of propcrtj^? where is the liberty of the people? 
I here, in this Declamatory Act, see my country proclaimed a slave I 
I see every man in this House enrolled a slave ! I see the judges of 
the realm, the oracles of the law, borne down by an unauthorized 
foreign power, by the authority of the British Parliament against the 
law ! I see the magistrates prostrate, and I see Parliament witness 
of these infringements, and silent (silent or employed to preach 
moderation to the people, whose liberties it will not restore) ! I 
therefore say, with the voice of 3,000,000 of people, that, notwith- 
standing the import of sugar, beetle-wood, and panellas, and the 
export of woollens and kersej'^s, nothing is safe, satisfactory, or 
honorable, nothing except a declaration of right. What ! are you, 
with 3,000,000 of men at your back, with charters in one hand and 
arms in the other, afraid to say you are a free people ? Are you, 
the greatest House of Commons that ever sat in Ireland, that want 
but this one act to equal that English House of Commons that passed 
the Petition of Right, or that other that passed the Declaration of 
Right, are you afraid to tell that British Parliament you ai'e a free 
people? Are the cities and the instructing counties, who have 
breathed a spirit that would have done honor to old Rome when 
Rome did honor to mankind, are they to be free by connivance? 
Are the military associations, those bodies whose origin, progress, 
and deportment have transcended, equalled at least, anything in 
modern or ancient story — is the vast line of northern army, are they 
to be free by connivance? What man will settle among you? 
Whei'e is the use of the Naturalization Bill ? What man will settle 
among j'ou? who will leave a land of liberty and a settled govern- 
ment, for a kingdom controlled b}' the Parliament of another country, 
whose liberty is a thing by stealth, whose trade a thing by permission, 



IIENEY GRATTAN. 545 

■whose judges deny her charters, whose Parliament leaves everything 
at random ; where the chance of freedom depends upon the hope that 
the jury shall despise the judge stating a British act, or a rabble stop 
the magistrate executing it, rescue your abdicated privileges, and 
save the constitution by trampling on the government, by anarchy 
and confusion. 

But I shall be told, that these are groundless jealousies, and that 
the principal cities, and more than one half of the counties of the 
kingdom, are misguided men, raising those groundless jealousies. 
Sir, let me become, on this occasion, the people's advocate, and 
your historian ; the people of this country were possessed of a code 
of liberty similar to that of Great Britain, but lost it through the 
weakness of the kingdom and the pusillanimity of its leaders. 
Having lost our liberty by the usurpation of tiie British Parliament, 
no wonder we became a prey to her ministers ; and they did plun- 
der us with all the hands of all the harpies, for a scries of years in 
^very shape of power, terrifying our people with the thunder of 
Great Britain, and bribing our leaders with the rapine of Ireland. 
The kingdom became a plantation, her Parliament deprived of its 
privileges, fell into contempt ; and, with the legislature, the lajv, 
the spirit of liberty, with her forms vanished. If a war broke out, 
as in 1778, and an occasion occurred to I'cstore lil)erty and restrain 
rapine. Parliament declined the opportunity ; but, with an active 
servility and treml)ling loyalty, gave and granted, without regard to 
the treasure we had left, or the rights we had lost. If a partial 
reparation was made upon a principle of expediency. Parliament 
did not receive it with the tranquil dignity of an august assembly, 
but with the alacrity of slaves. 

The principal individuals, possessed of gi'eat property but no inde- 
pendency, corrupted by their extravagance, or enslaved by their 
following a species of English factor against an Irish people, more 
afraid of the people of Ireland than the tyranny of England, pro- 
ceeded to that excess, that they opposed every proposition to lessen 
profusion, extend trade, or promote liberty ; they did more, they 
supported a measure which, at one blow, put an end to all trade ; 
they did more, they brought you to a condition which they them- 
selves did unanimously acknowledge a state of impending ruin ; 
they did this, talking as they are now talking, arguing against trade 



546 TREASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

as they now argue against liberty, threatening the people of Ireland 
■with the power of the British nation, and imploring them to rest 
satisiied with the ruins of their trade, as they now implore them to 
remain satisfied with the wreck of their constitution. 

The people thus admonished, starving in a land of plenty, the 
victim of two Parliaments, of one that stopped their trade, the other 
that fed on their constitution, inhabiting a country M'here industry 
was forbid, or towns swarming with begging manufacturers, and 
being obliged to take into their own hands that part of government 
which consists in protecting the subject, had recourse to two meas- 
ures, which in their origin, progress, and consequence, are the most 
extraordinary to be found in any ago or in any country, viz., a com- 
mercial and military association. The consequence of these meas- 
ures was instant : tlie enemy that hung on your shores departed, the 
Parliament asked for a free trade, and the British nation granted 
the trade, but withheld the freedom. The people of IreUuid are, 
therefore, not satisfied ; they ask for a constitution ; they have the 
authority of the wisest men in this House for what they now 
demand. What have these walls for this last century, resounded? 
The usurpation of the British Parliament, and the interference of 
the privy council. Have we taught the people to complain, and do 
we now condemn their insatiability, because they desire us to 
remove such grievances, at a time in which nothing can oppose 
them, except the very men by whom these grievances were acknowl- 
edged ? 

Sir, we may hope to dazzle with illumination, and we may sicken 
with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor will 
her heart be well at ease — never I so long as the Parliament of 
England exercises or claims a legislation over this country : so long 
as this shall be the case, that very free trade, otherwise a perpetual 
attachment will be the cause of new discontent ; it will ci-eate a 
pride to feel the indignity of bondage ; it will furnish a strength to 
bite your chain, and the liberty withheld will poison the good com- 
municated. 

The British minister mistakes the Irish character : had he intended 
to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar ; there is 
no middle policy ; win her heart by the restoration of her right, or 
cut off the nation's right hand ; greatly emancipate, or fundamentally 



HENRY GRATTAN. 54.7 

destroy. We mny talk plausibly to Englaud, but so long as she 
exei'cises a power to bind this country, so long are the nations in a 
state of war ; the claims of the one go against the liberty of the 
other, and the sentiments of the latter go to oppose those claims to 
the last drop of her blood. The English opposition, therefore, are 
right ; mere trade will not satisfy Ireland — they judge of us by 
other great nations, by the nation whose political life has been a 
struggle for liberty ; they judge of us with a true knowledge of, 
and just deference for, our character — that a country enlightened 
as Ireland, chartered as Ireland, armed as Ireland, and injured as 
Ireland, will be satisfied with nothing less than liberty. 

I admire that public-spirited merchant (Alderman Horan), who 
spread consternation at the Custom-house, and, despising the exam- 
ple which great men afforded, determined to try the question, and 
tendered for entry what the Britisli Parliament prohibits the subject 
to export, some articles of silk, and sought at his private risk the 
liberty of his country ; with him I am convinced it is neccssaiy to 
agitate the question of right. In vain will you endeavor to keep it 
back, the passion is too natural, the sentiment is too irresistible ; 
the question comes on of its own vitality — you must reinstate the 
laws. 

There is no objection to this resolution, except fears; I have 
examined your fears ; I pronounce them to be frivolous. I might 
deny that the British nation was attached to the idea of binding 
Ireland ; I might deny that England was a tyrant at heart ; and I 
might call to witness the odium of North and the popuhu-ity of 
Chatham, her support of Holland, her contributions to Corsica, and 
the charters communicated to Ireland ; but ministers have traduced 
England to deljase Ireland; and politicians, like priests, represent 
the power they serve as diabolical, to possess with superstitious 
fears the victim whom they design to plunder. If England is a 
tyrant, it is j^ou have made her so : it is the slave that makes the 
tyrant, and then murmurs at the master whom he himself has con- 
stituted. I do allow, on the subject of commerce, England was 
jealous in the extreme, and I do say it was commei'cial jealousy, it 
was the spirit of monopoly (the woollen trade and the act of navi- 
gation had made her tenacious of a comprehensive legislative 
authority), and having now ceded that monopoly, there is nothing 



548 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

in the way of yonr liberty except your own corruption and pusil- 
lanimity ; and nothing can prevent your being free except your- 
selves. It is not in the disposition of England ; it is not in tho 
interest of England; it is not in her arms. What! can 8,000,000 
of Englishmen, opposed to 20,000,000 of French, to 7,000,000 of 
Spanish, to 3,000,000 of Americans, reject the alliance of 3,000,000 
in Ireland? Can 8,000,000 of British men, thus outnumbered by 
foes, take upon their shoulders the expense of an expedition to 
enslave you? Will Great Britain, a wise and magnanimous coun- 
try, thus tutored by experience and wasted by war, the French 
navy riding her Channel, send an array to Ireland, to lev3' no tax, 
to enforce no law, to answer no end whatsoever, except to spoliate 
the charters of Ireland and enforce a barren oppression? What! 
has England lost thirteen pi'ovinces? has she reconciled herself to 
this loss, and will she not be reconciled to the liberty of Ireland? 
Take notice, that the very constitution which I move you to declare, 
Great Britain herself offered to America : it is a very instructive 
proceeding in the British history. In 1778 a commission went out, 
with powers to cede to the thirteen provinces of America, totally 
and radically, the legislative authority claimed over her by the 
British Parliament, and tho Commissioners, pursuant to their 
powers, did offer to all, or any, of the American States, the total 
sun-ender of the legislative authority of the British Parliament. I 
will read you their letter to the Congress. [Here the letter was 
read, surrendering tho power as aforesaid.] What ! has England 
offered this to the resistance of America, and will she refuse it to 
the loyalty of Ireland? Your fears then are nothing but an habitual 
siil)jngation of mind ; that sul)jngation of mind which made you, at 
first, tremble at every great measure of safety ; which niMde tho 
principal men amongst us conceive the commercial association wnuld 
be a war ; that fear, which made them imagine the military associa- 
tion had a tendency to treason ; which made them think a siiort 
money-bill would be a public convulsion ; and yet these measures 
have not only proved to be useful but are held to be moderate, and 
the Parliament that ad()i)ted them, praised, not for its unanimity 
onl}', l)nt for its temper also. You now wonder that you suhuiilted 
for so many years to the loss of the woollen trade and the depriva- 
tion of ihc glass trade ; raised above j'our former abject state in 



HENRY GRATTAN. 549 

commerce, you arc ashamed at your past pusillanimity ; so -when 
you have summoned a boldness which shall assert the liberties of 
your country — raised by the act, and reinvested, as you will be, in 
the glory of your ancient rights and privileges, you will be surprised 
at yourselves, who have so long sulimittcd to their violation. Mod- 
eration is but a relative term; for nations, like men, are only safe 
in proportion to the spirit the}^ put forth, and the proud contempla- 
tion with which they survey themselves. Conceive )'ourselves a 
plantation, ridden by an oppressive government, and everything 
you have done is but a fortunate phrenzy : conceive yourselves to 
be wliat you are, a great, a growing, and a proud nation, and a 
declaration of right is no more than the safe exercise of your indu- 
bital)le authority. 

But, though you do not hazard disturbance by agreeing to this 
resolution, you do most exceedingly hazard tranquillity l)y rejecting 
it. Do not imagine that the question will be over when this motion 
shall be negatived. No ; it will recur in a vast variety of shapes 
and diversity of places. Your constituents have instructed you in 
great numbers, with a powerful uniformity of sentiment, and in a 
stj'le not the less awful because full of respect. They will find 
resources in their own virtue if they have found none in yours. 
Public pride and conscious liberty, wounded by repulse, will find 
ways and means of vindication. You are in that situation in which 
every man, every hour of the day, may shake the pillars of the 
state ; every court may swarm with the question of right ; every 
quay and wharf with prohibited goods ; what shall the Judges, what 
the Commissioners, do upon this occasion? Shall they comply with 
the laws of Ireland, and against the claims of England, and stand 
firm where you have capitulated? shall they, on the other hand, not 
comply, and shall they persist to act against the law? will you 
punish them if they do so? will 30U proceed against them for not 
showing a spirit superior to your own? On the other hand, will 
you nut punish them? Will you leave liberty to be trampled on 
by those men? Will you bring them and yourselves, all constitu- 
ted orders, executive power, judicial power, and parliamentary 
authority, into a state of odium, impotence, and contempt : trans- 
ferring the task of defending public right into the hands of the 
populace, and leaving it to the judges to break the laws, and to the 



550 TREASURE OF ELOQUENCE. 

people to assert them? Such would be the consequence of folse 
moderation, of irritating timidity, of inflammatory palliatives, of the 
weak and corrupt hope of compromising with the court, before you 
have emancipated the country. 

I have answered the only semblance of a solid i-eason against the 
motion ; I will i-emove some lesser pretences, some minor impedi- 
ments ; for instance, first, that we have a resolution of the same 
kind already on our Journals, it will be said ; but how often was the 
great charter confirmed ? not more frequently than your rights have 
been violated. Is one solitary resolution, declarator}' of your right, 
sufiicicnt for a country, whose history, from the beginning unto the 
end, has been a course of violation? The fact is, every new breach 
is a reason for a new repair ; every new infringement should be a 
new declaration ; lest charters should be overwhelmed with prece- 
dents to their prejudice, a nation's right obliterated, and the people 
themselves lose the memory of their own freedom. 

I shall hear of ingratitude : I name the argument to despise it and 
the men who make use of it : I know the men who use it are not 
grateful, they are insatiate ; they are public extortioners, who would 
stop the tide of public prosperity, and turn it to the channel of their 
own emolument : I know of no species of gratitude which should 
prevent my country from being free, no gratitude which should 
oblige Ireland to bo the slave of England. In cases of robbery and 
usurpation, nothing is an object of gratitude except the thing stolen, 
the charter spoliated. A nation's liberty cannot, like her treasures, 
bo meted and parcelled out in gratitude : no man can be grateful or 
liberal of his conscience, nor woman other honor, nor nation of her 
liberty : there are certain unimpartable, inherent, invaluable pi'oper- 
ties, not to be alienated from the person, whether body politic or 
body natural. With the same contempt do I treat that charge which 
says, that Ireland is insatiable ; saying, that Ireland asks nothing 
but that which Great Britain has robbed her of, her rights and priv- 
ileges ; to say that Ireland will not be satisfied with liberty, because 
she is not satisfied with slavery, is folly. I laugh at that man who 
supposes that Ireland will not be content with a free trade and a free 
constitution ; and would any man advise her to be content with 
less? 

I shall bo told that we hazard the modification of the law of Poyu- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 551 

ings and the Jud<jes' Bill, and the Habeas Corpus Bill, and the 
Nullum Tempos Bill ; but I ask, have you been for years begging 
for these little things, and have not you yet been able to obtain 
them? and have you been contending against a little body of eighty 
men in Priv}' Council assembled, coilvocating themselves into the 
image of a parliament, and ministering your high office ? and have 
you been contending against one man, an humble individual, to you 
a Leviathan — the English Attorney-general — who advises in the 
case of Irish bills, and exercises legislation in his own person, and 
makes your parliamentary deliberations a blank, by altering j-our 
bills or suppressing them? and have you not yet been able to con- 
quer this little monster ! Do you wish to know the reason? I will 
tell you : because you have not been a parliament, nor your country 
a people. Do you wish to know the remedy? — be a parliament, 
become a nation, and these things will follow in the train of your 
consequence. I shall be told that titles are shaken, being vested by 
force of English acts ; but in answer to that, I observe, time may be 
a title, acquiescence a title, forfeiture a title, but an English act of 
parliament certainly cannot : it is an authority, which, if a judge 
would charge, no jury would find, and which all the electors in Ire- 
land have already disclaimed unequivocally, cordially, and univer- 
sally. Sir, this is a good argument for an act of title, but no 
argument against a declaration of right. My friend who sits above 
me (Mr. Yclverton), has a Bill of Confirmation; we do not come 
unprepared to Parliament. I am not come to shake property, but 
to confirm property and restore freedom. The nation begins to 
form ; we are moulding into a people ; freedom asserted, property 
secured, and the army (a mercenary baud) likely to be restrained by 
law. Never was such a revolution accomplished in so short a time, 
and with such public tranquillity. In what situation would those 
men who call themselves friends of constitution and of government 
have loft you? They would have left you without a title, as they 
state it, to your estates, without an assertion of your constitution, or 
a law for j-our army ; and this state of unexampled private and pub- 
lic insecurity, this anarchy raging in the kingdom for eighteen 
months, these mock moderators would have had the presumption to 
•call peace. 

I shall be told, that the judges will not be swayed by the resolu- 



552 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tion of this House. Sir, that the judges will not be borne down by 
the resolutions (jf Parliament, not fonndcd in law, I am willing ta 
believe ; but the resolutions of this House, founded in law, they will 
respect most exceedingly. I shall ahvays rejoice at the independent 
spirit of the distributors of the law, l)ut must lament th:it hitherto 
they have given no such symptom. The judges of the British nation, 
■when they adjudicated against tlie laus of tiiat countrj^ pleaded pre- 
cedent and the prostration and profligacy of a long tribe of subservi- 
ent predecessors, and were punished. The judges of Ireland, if they 
should lie called upon, and should plead sad necessity, the thraldom 
of the times, and above all, the silent fears of Parliament, they, no 
doubt, will be excused: but when your declai'atinns shall have pro- 
tected them from their fears ; when 3'ou shall have emboldened the 
judges to declare the law according to the charter, I make no doubt 
they will do their duty ; and your resolution, not making a new law, 
but giving new life to the old ones, will be secretly felt and inwardly 
acknowledged, and there will not be a ju<lgo who will not perceive, 
to the innermost recess of his tribunal, the truth of your charters and 
the vigor of your justice. 

The same laws, the same charters, communicate to both king- 
doms, Great Britain and Ireland, the same rights and privileges ; 
and one privilege above them all is that communicated by ISIagna 
Charta, by the 25th of Edward the Third, and by a multitude of other 
statutes, "not to be bound by any act except made with the arch- 
bishops, bishops, earls, barons, and freemen of the commonalty," 
viz., of the parliament of the realm. On this right of exclusive 
legislation are founded the Petition of Riglit, Bill of Right, Rev- 
olution, and Act of SettUinent. The King has no other title to 
his crown than that which you have to your liberty ; both are 
founded, the throne and your freedom, upon the right vested in 
the subject to resist by arms, notwithstanding their oaths of al- 
legiance, any authority attempting to impose acts of power as 
laws, whether that authority be one man or a host, the second 
James, or the British Parliament ! 

Every argument for the House of Hanover is equally an argu- 
ment for the liberties of Ireland : the Act of Settlement is an act 
of rebellion, or the declaratory statute of the 6th of George th& 
First an act of usurpation ; for both cannot be law. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 553 

I do not refer to doubtful history, but to living record ; to 
common charters ; to the interpretation England has put upon 
these charters ; an interpretation not made by words only, l)ut 
crowned by arms ; to the revolution she had formed upon them, 
to the king she has deposed, and to the king she has established; 
and above all, to the oath of allegiance solemnly plighted to the 
House of Stuart, and afterwards set aside, in the instance of a 
grave and moral people absolved by virtue of these very charters. 

And as anything less than liberty is inadequate to Ireland, so 
is it dangerous to Great Britain. We are too near the British 
nation, we are too conversant with her history, we are too much 
fired by her example, to be anything less than her equal ; anything 
less, we should be her bitterest enemies — an enemy to that power 
which smote us with her mace, and to that constitution from whose 
blessings we were excluded : to be ground as wo have been by the 
British nation, bound by her parliament, plundered by her crown, 
threatened by her enemies, insulted with her protection, while we 
returned thanks for her condescension, is a system of meanness and 
misery Avhich has exjiired in our determination, as I hope it has in 
her magnanimity. 

There is no policy left for Great Britain but to cherish the remains 
of her empire, and do justice to a country who is determined to do 
justice to herself, certain that she gives nothing equal to what she 
received from us when we gave her Ireland. 

With regard to this country, England must resort to the free prin- 
ciples of government, and must forego that legislative power which 
she has exercised to do mischief to herself; she must go back to 
freedom, which, as it is the foundation of her constitution, so it is 
the main pillar of lier empire ; it is not merely the connection of the 
crown, it is a constitutional annexation, an alliance of liberty, which 
is the true meaning and mystery of the sisterhood, and will make 
both countries one arm and one soul, rcplenishiug from time to time, 
in their immortal connection, the vital spirit of law and liberty from 
the lamp of each other's light ; thus combined by the ties of common 
interest, equal trade and equal liberty, the constitution of both 
countries may become immortal, a new and milder empire may arise 
from the errors of the old, and the British nation assume ouce more 
her natural station — the head of mankind. 



55i TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

That there ai'e precedents against us 1 allow — acts of power I 
would call them, not precedent ; and I answer the English pleading 
such precedents, as they answered their kings when they urged pre- 
cedents against the liberty of England : Such tilings are the weak- 
ness of the times ; the tyranny of one side, the feebleness of the 
other, the law of neither ; we will not be bound l)y them ; or rather, 
in the words of the declaration of right, " no doing judgment, pro- 
ceeding, or anywise to the contrary, shall be brought into precedent 
or example."' Do not then tolerate a power — the power of the 
British Parliament over this land, which has no foundation in utility 
or necessity, or empire, or the laws of England, or the laws of Ire- 
land, or the laws of nature, or the laws of God, — do not suffer it to 
have a duration in your mind. 

Do not tolerate that power which l^lasted you for a century, that 
power wiiich shattered your loom, banished your manufacturers, 
•dishonored your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people ; 
do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woollen, or an import of 
sugar, and permit that power which has thus withered the land to 
remain in your country and have existence in your pusillanimity. 

Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine a surviving 
hope in the fears of Ireland ; do not send the people to their own 
resolves for liberty, passing by the tribunals of justice and the high 
oourt of parliament ; neither imagine that, by any formation of apol- 
ogy, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to 
your children, who will sting you with their curses in your grave for 
having interposed between them and their Maker, robbing them of 
an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not 
ore.ate, and can never restore. 

Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thral- 
dom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and 
miraculous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe 
— that here the principal men among us fell into mimic trances of 
gratitude — they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an 
«mpty treasury — and when liberty was within their grasp, and the 
temple oi)ened her folding doors, and the arms of the people 
■clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them 
on, that they fell down, and were pi'ostituted at the threshold. 

I might, as a constituent, come to your bar, and demand my lib- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 555 

erty. I do call upon you, by the laws of the land and their violation, 
by the instruction of eighteen counties, by the arms, inspiration, 
and providence of the present moment, tell us the rule by which 
we shall go, — assert the law of Ireland, — declare the liberty of the 
land. 

I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amend- 
ment; neither, speaking for the subject's freedom, am I to hear of 
faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe, in this our island, in 
common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no 
■ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chain, and contem- 
plate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest 
cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to bis 
rags ; he may be naked, he shall not be in iron ; and I do see the 
time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted; 
and though great men shall apostatize, yet the cause will live ; and 
though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall 
outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like 
the word of the holy man, wiU not die with the prophet, but survive 
him. 



556 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Philippic Against Flood. 



October 28, 1783. 

f^yiT was said "that the pen would fall from the hand, and the foetus 
J^ of the mind would die unborn,"* if men had not a privilege to 
f maintain a ri";ht in the Parliament of Ensland to make law for 
Ireland. The affectation of zeal, and a burst of forced and 
metaphorical conceits, aided l)y the acts of the press, gave an alarm 
which, I hope, was momentary, and which only exposed the "arti- 
fice of those who were wicked, and the haste of those who were 
deceived. 

But it is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I 
maintain my reputation in public and in jn-ivate life. No man, who 
has not a bad character, can ever say that I deceived ; no countrj' can 
call me a cheat. But I will suppose such a public character. I will 
suppose such a man to have existence ; I will begin with his charac- 
ter in his political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of 
political dissolution. 

I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been 
intemperate; in the second, to have been corrupt; and in the last, 
seditious ; that, after an envenomed attack on the persons and mea- 
sures of a succession of viceroys, and after mucii declamation against 
their illegalities and their profusion, he took office, and became a 
suppenler of Government, when the profusion of ministers had 
greatl}' increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond example : when 
your money bills were altered without reserve by the council ; when 
an embargo was laid on your export trade, and a war declared against 
the liberties of America. At such a critical moment I M'ill suppose 
this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle 

*Mr. Flood's expression. 



HENRY GKATTAN. 557 

his declamation, to swallow his invectives, to give his assent and vote 
to the ministers, and to become a supporter of Government, its mea- 
sures, its embargo, and its American war. I will suppose that he was 
suspected by the government that had bought him, and in consequence 
thereof, that he thought proper to resort to the arts of a trimmer, the 
last sad refuge of disappointed ambition ; that, with respect to the 
constitution of his country, that part, for instance, which regarded 
the mutiny bill, when a clause of reference was introduced, whereby 
the articles of war, which were, or hereafter might be, passed in 
England, should be current in Ireland without the interference of her 
Parliament; when such a clause was in view, . I will suppose this 
gentleman to have absconded. Again, when the bill was made per- 
petual, I will suppose him again to have absconded. But a ^year and 
a half after the Inll had passed, then I will suppose this gentleman to 
have come forward, and to say, that your constitution had been de- 
stroyed by the perpetual bill. AVith regard to that part of the con- 
stitution that relates to the law of Poynings, I will suppose the 
gentleman to have made many a long, very long, disquisition before 
he took office, but, after he had received office, to have been as silent 
on that sul)ject as before he had been loquacious. That, when nion^'y 
bills, under color of that law, were altered year after year, as in 1775 
and 1776, and when the bills so altered were resumed and passed, I 
will suppose that gentleman to have absconded or acquiesced, and to 
have supported the minister who made the alteration ; but when ho 
was dismissed from office, and a member introduced a bill to remedy 
this evil, I will suppose that this gentleman inveighed against the 
mischief, against the remedy, and against the person of the intro- 
ducer, who did that duty which he himself for seven jears had 
abandoned. With respect to that part of the constitution which is 
connected with the repeal of the Gth of George the First, when the 
adequacy of the repeal was debating in the House, I will suppose 
this gentleman to make no kind of objection ; that he never named 
at that time, the word renunciation ; and that, on the division on 
that subject, he absconded ; but, when the office he had lost was 
given to another man, that then he came forward and exclaimed 
against the measure ; nay, that he went into the public streets to 
canvass for sedition, that he became a raml)ling incendiary, and 
endeavored to excite a mutiny in the volunteers against an adjust- 



558 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ment between Great Britain and Ireland, of liberty and repose, 
which he had not the virtue to make, and against an administra- 
tion who had the virtue to free the country without buying the 
members. 

With respect to commei'ce, I will suppose this gentleman to have 
supported an embargo which lay on the country for three years, and 
almost destroyed it; and when an address in 1778, to open her trade 
was jiropounded, to remain silent and inactive ; and with respect to 
that other part of her trade, which regarded the duty on sugar, 
when the merchants were examined in 1778 on the inadequate pro- 
tecting duty, when the inadequate duty was voted, when the act 
was recommitted, when another duty was proj)osed, when the bill 
returned with the inadequate duty substituted, when the altered bill 
was adopted, on every one of those questions I will suppose the 
gentleman to abscond : but a year and a half after the mischief was 
done, he out of office, I will suppose him to come forth, and to tell 
his country, that her trade had been destroyed by an inadequate 
duty on English sugar, as her constitution had been ruined by a 
perpetual mutiny bill. With relation to throe-fourths of our fellow- 
sul)jects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them 
rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to 
have come forth to give his negative to their pretensions. In the 
same manner I will suppose him to have opposed the institution of 
the volunteers, to which we owe so much, and that he went to a 
meeting in his own county to prevent their establishment ; that he 
himself kept out of their associations ; that he was almost the only 
man in this House that was not in uniform ; and that he never was a 
volunteer until he ceased to be a placeman, and until he became an 
incendiary. 

With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable 
from oui's, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy 
decided and unreserved ; that he voted against her liberty ; and 
voted, moreover, for an address to send 4,000 Irish troops to cut 
the throats of the Americans ; that he called these butchers "armed 
negotiators," and stood with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe 
in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only 
hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. 

Thus defective in every relationship, whether to constitution, com- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 55f) 

merce, toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much pri- 
vate improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his 
patriotism, and his honor on a level with his oath. He loves to 
deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him, and say : Sir, 
you are much mistaken if you think that your talents have been as- 
great as j^our life has been reprehensible ; you began your parlia- 
mentary career with an acrimony and personality which could liave 
been justified only by a supposition of virtue : after a rank and 
clamorous opposition you became on a sudden silent; you were 
silent for seven years : you were silent on the greatest questions, 
and you were silent for money ! In 1773, while a negociation was 
pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded 
from your duty in parliament, you forsook yoin* law of Poynings, 
you forsook the questions of econoraj', and abandoned all the old 
themes of your former declamation ; you were not at that period to 
be found in the House ; you were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunt- 
ing the lobby of the House of Commons, watching the moment in 
which the question should bo put, that you might vanish ; yon were 
descried with a criminal anxiety, retiring from the scenes of your 
past glory ; or yon were perceived coasting the upper benches of 
this House liUc a bird of prey, with an evil aspect and a sepulchral 
note, meditating to pounce on its quarry. These waj'S — they were 
not the ways of honor — you practised pending a negotiation which 
was to end either in your sale or your sedition : the former taking 
place, you supported the rankest measures that ever came before 
Parliament; the embargo of 1776, for instance. "O fatal embargo, 
that breach of law and ruin of commerce ! " You supported the 
unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous 
ministry — the address to support the American war — the other 
address to send 4,000 men, whom j'ou had yourself declared to be 
necessary for the defence of Ireland, to figtt against the liberties of 
America, to which you had declared yourself a friend ; — you. Sir, 
who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners 
of 1778, on account of their hostility to America; — you. Sir, who 
manufocture stage thunder against Mr. Eden, for his anti-American 
principles ; — you. Sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the im- 
morlal Hampden ; — you, Sir, approved of the tyranny exercised 
against America; — and you, Sir, voted 4,000 Irish troops to cut 



560 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for 
your freedom, fighting for the great principle, liberty ; but yon found 
at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft 
and cunning), that the king had only dishonored you; the Court 
had bought, but Avould not trust you; and having voted for the 
worst measures, you remained for seven years the creature of 
salari/, without the confidence of Government. Mortified at the 
discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to 
the sad expedients of duplicity ; you try the sorry game of a trim- 
mer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary ; you give no 
honest support either to the Government or the people ; 3'ou, at the 
most critical period of their existence, take no part, you sign no 
non-consumption agreement, you arc no volunteer, you oppose no 
perpetual nnitiny bill, no altered sugar bill ; you declare that j'ou 
lament that the declaration of right should have been brought for- 
ward ; and observing, with regard to prince and people, the most 
impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your 
Sovereign by betraying the Government, as you had sold the peo- 
ple : until at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, 
the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another per- 
son put in j'our place, you fly to the ranks of the volunteers, and 
canvass for mutiny : you announce that the country was ruined by 
other men during that period in which she had been sold by you. 
Your logic is, that tlic repeal of a declaratory law is not the repeal 
of a law at all, and the eficct of that logic is, an English act afl'ect- 
ing to emancipate Ireland, by exercising over her the legislative 
authority of the British Parliament. Such has been your conduct, 
and at such conduct every order of your fellow-subjects have a right 
to exclaim! The meix-hant may say to you — the constitutionalist 
may say to you — tlie American may say to you — and I, I now say, 
and say to your beard : Sir, you are not an honest man. 

Mr. Flood rose to rcpl3-, but after having proceeded some length in his defence, 
he fell so much out of orilcr, that the Speaker interfered. He declared how much 
pain he had suflered in permittiny; this contest to proceed, and that nothing but 
the calls of the House to hear the two members, should have made him sit so long 
silent. He requested Wr. Flood would sit down, with which request he complied, 
and shortly after retired. The speaker issued his warrant to apprehend the parties, 
and Mr. Flood was shortly after taken into custody. The House then directed that 
search should be made for Mr. Grattau; and the parties were bound over. It was 
then moved that the motion of Sir Henry Cavendish be taken into consideration, 
immediately after a report be made from the committee of accounts ; and it passed 
in the afllrmative. 



HENRY GRATTAN. ggj 



Commercial Propositions. 



August 12, 1785. 

|OWEVER, lest certiin glosses slioukl seem to go unanswered, - 
^^ I shall, for the sake of argument, waive past settlements, and 
combat the reasoning tjf the English resolutions, the address, 
His Majesty's answer and the reasoning of this day. It is 
here said, that the laws respecting commerce and navigation should 
be similar, and inferred that Ireland should subscribe the laws of 
England on those subjects ; that is the same law, the same legisla- 
ture. But this argument goes a great deal too far : it goes to the 
army, for the mutiny bill should be the same ; it was endeavored to 
be extended to the collection of your revenue, and is in train to be 
extended to your taxes ; it goes to the extinction of the most invalu- 
able part of your parliamentary capacity ; it is a union, an incipient 
and creeping union; a virtual' union, establishing one will in the 
general concerns of commerce and navigation, and reposing that will 
in the Parliament of Great Britain ; a union where our Parliament 
preserves its existence after it has lost its authority, and our people 
are to pay for a parliamentary establishment, without any proportion 
of parliamentary representation. In opposing the right honorable 
gentleman's bill, I consider myself as opposing a union in limine, 
and that argument for union which makes similarity of law and com- 
munity of interest (reason strong for the freedom of Ireland!) a 
pretence for a condition which would be dissimilarity of law, because 
extinction of constitution, and therefore hostility, not community of 
interest. I ask on what experience is this argument founded ? Have 
you, ever since j'our redemption, refused to preserve a similarity of 
law in trade and navigation ? Have you not followed Great Britain 
in all her changes of the act of navigation during the whole of that 



562 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

unpalatabic business, the American war? Have you not excliicled 
the cheap produce of other plantations, in order that Irisli poverty 
might give a monopoly to the dear produce of tlic British colonies? 
Have you not made a better use of your liberty than Great Britain 
did of her power? But I have an objection to this argument, 
stronger even than its want of foundation in reason and experiment ; 
I hold it to be nothing less than an intolerance of tlie parliamentary 
constitution of Ireland, ti declaration that the fall and free external 
legislation of the Irish Parliament is incompatible with the British 
empu'e. I do acknowledge that by 3'oiir extei-nal power, you might 
discompose the harmony of the empire, and I add that by your powei- 
over the parse, you might dissolve the state : but to the latter you 
owe your existence in the constitution, and to the former, your au- 
thority and station in the empire: this argumenl, tlicrcfore, rests 
the connection upon a new and a false principle, goes directly against 
the root of Parliament, and is not a difficulty to be accommodated, 
but an error to be eradicated ; and if any body of men can still think 
that the Irish constitution is incompatible with the British empire — 
doctrine which I abjure as sedition against the connection ; but if 
any body of men are justified in thinking that the Irish constitution 
is incompatible witli the British empire, perish the empire ! live the 
constitution ! Eeduced by this false dilemma to take a part, my 
second wish is the British empire, my first wish and boundcn duty 
is the liberty of Ireland. 

But we are told this imperial power is not only necessary for Eng- 
land, but safe for Ireland. What is the present question? what but 
the abuse of this very power of regulating the trade of Ireland by 
the British Parliament, excluding you and including herself by virtue 
of the same words of the same act of navigation? And what was the 
promovent cause of this arrangement? what but the power you are 
going to surrender — the distinct and independent external authority 
of (he Irish Parliament, coijipctent to question that misconstruction? 
What is the remedy now proposed? — the evil. Go back to the 
Parliament of England. I ask again, what were the difficulties in 
the way of your eleven propositions? what but the jealousy of the 
British manufacturers on the subject of trade? And will you make 
them your parliament, and that too forever, and that too on the sub- 
ject of their jealousy, and in the moment they displayed it I I will 



HENRY GRATTAN. 563 

suppose tlmt jealousy realized ; that you rival them in sonio market 
abroad, and that tliey petition their Parliament to impose a regula- 
tion which shall affect a tonnage which you have and Great Britain 
has not : how would you then feel yonr situation, when you should 
be oliliged to register all this? And how would you feel your deg- 
radation, vfhcn you should sec your own manufacturers pass yon by 
as a cypher in the constitution, and deprecate their ruin at the bar 
of a foreign parliament ! Whence the American war? Whence the 
Irish restrictions ? Whence the misconstruction of the act of navi- 
gation? Whence but from the evil of suffering one country to regu- 
late the trade and navigation of another, and of instituting, under tho 
idea of general prdtectress, a proud domination, which sacrifices the 
interest of the whole to the ambition of a part, and arms the little 
passions of the monopolist with the sovereign potency of an Imperial 
Parliimient : for great nations, when cursed with unnatural swa}', fol- 
low but their nature when they invade ; and human wisdom has not 
better provided fr)r human safety tlian by limiting the principles of 
human power. The surrender of legislature has been likened to cases 
that not unfrequently take place between two equal nations, covenant- ■ 
iugto suspend, in particular cases, their rcspecti\-c legislative powers 
for mutual lienefit ; thus Great Britain and Portugal agree to suspend 
their legislative power in favor of the wine of the one and the woollen 
of the other ; but if Portugal had gone fartlier, and agreed to sub- 
scribe the laws of England, this covenant had not been a treaty, but 
conquest. So Great Britain and Ireland may covenant not to raise 
high duties on each other's manufactures ; but if Ireland goes farther, 
and Cijvenants to subscribe British law, this is not a mutual suspen- 
sion of the exercise of legislative power, but a transfer of the power 
itself from one country to another, to be exercised by another hand. 
Such covenant is not reciprocity of trade ; it is a surrender of the 
government of ^^our trade, inequality of trade, and inequality of con- 
stitution. I speak", however, as if such transfer could take place ; 
but in fact it could not : any arrangement so covenanting is a mere 
nullity ; it could not bind you, still less could it bind your succes- 
sors ; for a man is not omnipotent over himself, neither are your 
parliaments omnipotent over themselves, to accomplish their own 
desti'uction, and propagate death to their successors. 

There is in these cases a superior relationship to our respective 



504: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

creators — God and the community, which, in the instance of the 
individual, arrests the hand of suicide, and in that of the political 
body, stops the act of surrender, and maiies man the means of pro- 
pagation, and parliament the organ to continue liberty, not the 
engine to destroy it. However, though the surrender is void, there 
are two ways of attempting it ; one, by a surrender in form, the 
other, by a surrender in substance ; appointing another parliament 
your substitute, and consenting to be its register or stamp, by vir- 
tue of which to introduce the law and edict of another land, to clotlie 
with the forms of your law foreign deliberations, and to preside over 
the disgraceful ceremony of your own abdicated authority. Both 
methods are equally surrenders, and both are wholly void. I speak 
on principle, the principle on which you stand — your creation. 
We, the limited trustees of the delegated power, born for a particu- 
lar purpose, limited to a particular time, and bearing an inviolable 
relationship to tire people who sent us to parliament, cannot break 
that relationship, counteract that purpose, surrender, diminish, or 
derogate from those privileges we breathe but to preserve. Could 
the Parliament of England covenant to subscribe your laws ? could 
she covenant that young Ireland should command and old England 
should obey? If such a proposal to England were mockery, to 
Ireland it cannot be constitution. I rest on authority as well as 
principle — the authority on which the revolution rests — Mr. Locke, 
who, in his chapter on the abolition of government, sa_ys : " that 
the transfer of legislative power is the abolition of the state, not a 
transfer." Thus, I may congratulate this House and mj'self that it 
is one of the blessings of the British constitution that it cannot per- 
ish of rapid mortality, nor die in a da}^ like the men who should 
protect her. Any act that would destroy the liberty of the people 
is dead-born from the M'omb. Men may put down the public cause 
for a season, but another year would see old Constitution advance 
the honoi's of his head, and the good institution of Parliament slink- 
ing off the tomb to rcasccnd, in all its pomp, and pride, and i)Ieni- 
tude, and privilege ! 

Sir, I have stated these propositions and the bill as a mere trans- 
fer of external legislative authority to the Parliament of Great 
Britain, but I have understated their mischief; they go to taxation ; 
taxes on the trade with the British plantations, taxes on the pro- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 565 

clnce of foreign plantations, taxes on some of the produce of the 
United States of North America ; they go to port duties, such as 
Great Britain laid on America ! The mode is varied, but the prin- 
ciple is the same. Here Great Britain talces the stamp of the Irish 
Parliament ; Great Britain is to prescribe, and Ireland is to obey ! 
We anticipate the rape by previous surrender, and throw into the 
scale our honor as well as our liberty. Do not imagine that all 
these resolutions are mere acts of regulation ; they are solid, sub- 
stantial revenue, a great part of your additional duty. I allow the 
bill excepts rum and tobacco ; but the principle is retained, and the 
operation of it only kept back. I have stated that Great Britain 
may by these propositions crush your commerce, but I shall be told 
that the commercial jealousy of Great Britain is at an end : but are 
her wants at an end? are her wishes for Irish subsidy at an end? 
No; and they maybe gratified 1)y laying colony duties on herself, 
and so raising on Ireland an imperial revenue to be subscribed by 
onr Parliament, without the consent of our Parliament, and in des- 
pite of our people. Or, if a minister should please to turn himself 
to a general excise — if wishing to relieve from the weight of fur- 
ther additional duties the hereditary revenue now alienated — if 
wishing to relieve the alarms of the English mnnufacturers, who 
complain of our exemption from excises, particularly on soap, can- 
dles, and leather, he should proceed on those already registered 
aiticles of taxation, he might tax you by threats, suggesting that if 
you refuse to raise an excise on yourself, England will raise colony 
duties on both. See what a mighty instrument of coercion this bill 
and these resolutions ! Stir, and the minister can crush you in the 
name of Great Britain; he can crush your imports; he can crush 
your exports ; he can do this in a manner peculiarly mortifying, by 
virtue of a clause in a British act of Parliament, that would seem to 
impose the same restrictions on Great Britain ; he can do this in a 
manner still more offensive, by the immediate means of your own 
Parliament, who would be then an active cypher and notorious 
stamp in the hands of Great Britain, to forge and falsify the name 
and authority of the people of Ireland. 

I have considered your situation under these propositions with 
respect to Great Britain : see what would be your situation with 
respect to the crown. You would have granted to the King a per- 



GGO TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

petual money bill, or a money bill to continue as long as the Par- 
liament of Great Britain shall please, with a covenant to increase it 
as often as the British Parliament shall please. By the resolntions 
a great part of the additional duty would have been so granted ; the 
trade of the country is made dependent on the Parliament of Great 
Britain, and the Crown is made less dependent on the Parliament 
of Irchmd, and a code of prerogative added to a code of empire. 
If the merchant, after this, should petition you to lower 3'our duties 
on the articles of trade, you answer, "trade is in covenant." If your 
constituents should instruct you to limit the bill of sup])ly, or piissu 
short money bill, you answer, "the purse of the n.ition, like her 
trade, is in covenant." No more of six mouths' monc}' bills ; no 
more of instructions from constituents ; Ihat connection is broken 
by this bill. Pass this, you have no constituent ; you arc not the 
X'cprescntativc of the people of Ireland, but the register of the Bri- 
tish Parliament, and the equalizer of British duties. 

In order to complete this chain of power, one link, I do acknow- 
ledge, was wanting — a perpetual revenue bill, or a covenant from 
time to time to renew the bill for the collection thereof. The twen- 
tieth resolution, and this bill founded upon it, attain that olyect. 
Sir, this House rests on thi'cc pillars: your power over the annual 
mutiny bill ; your power over the annual additional duties ; your 
power over the collection of the revenue. The latter power is of 
great consequence, because a great part of our revenues is granted 
forever. Your ancestors were slaves ; and for their estates, that 
is, for the act of settlement, granted the hereditary revenue, and 
from that moment ceased to be a parliament. Kor was it till many 
years after that parliament revived ; but it revived, as 3"ou under 
this bill would continue, without parliamentary power. Every evil 
measure derived argument, energy, and essence from this unconsti- 
tutional fund. If a country gentleman complained of the expenses 
of the Crown, ho was told a frugal government could go on without 
a parliament, and that we held our existence by withholding the 
discharge of our duty. However, though the funds were granted 
forever, the provision for the collection was inadequate ; the smug- 
gler learned to evade the penalties, and parliament, though not neces- 
sary for granting the hereditary revenue, became necessary for its 
collection. Here then wo rest on three pillars : the annual mutiny 



HENRY GRATTAN. 567 

bill, tlie annual additional supply, and the annual collection of the 
revenue. If you remove all these, this fabric falls ; remove any one 
of them, and it totters; for it is not the mace, nor the chair, nor 
this dome, but the dclil)erate voice i-esident therein, that constitutes 
the essence of parliament. Clog your deliberations, and you are no 
longer a parliament, with a thousand gaudy surviving circumstances 
of show and authorit}'. 

Contemplate for a moment the powers this bill presumes to per- 
petuate — a perpetual repeal of trial by jury ; a pcrpetutd repeal of 
the great charter ; a j;)erpetual writ of assistance ; a perpetual felony 
to strike an exciseman ! 

The late Ciiief-Baron Burgh, speaking on the revenue bill, ex- 
claimed : "You give to the dipping rule what you should deny to 
the sceptre." 

All the unconstitutional powers of the excise we ai'e to perpetu- 
ate ; the constitutional powers of Parliament wc are to abdicate. 
Can we do all this? can we make these bulky surrenders, in dimi- 
nution of the power, in derogation of the pride of parliament, and 
in violation of those eternal relatitmships which the body that repre- 
sents should bear to the community which constitutes? 

The pretence given for this unconstitutional idea is weak indeed : 
that, as the benefits arc permanent, so should be the compensation. 
But trade laws are to follow their nature, revenue laws to follow 
their's. On the permanent nature of commercial advantages depends 
the faith of trade ; on the limited nature of revenue laws depends 
the existence of parliament. But the error of argument arises from 
the vice of dealing. It is a market for a constitution, and a logic, 
applical)le to barter only, is applied to freedom. To qualify this 
dei'eliction of every principle and power, the surrender is made 
constitutional : that is, the British market for the Irish constitution 
— the shadow of a market for the sul)stance of a constitution ! You 
are to reserve an option, trade or liberty ; if you mean to come to 
the British market, you must pass under the British yoke. I object 
to this principle in every shape, whether you are, as the resolution 
was first worded, directly to transfer legislative power to the British 
parliament ; whether, as it was afterwards altered, you are to cove- 
nant to subscribe her acts ; or whether, as it is now softened, you 
are to take the chance of the British mai'ket so long as you waive 



568 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the blessings of the British constitution — terms dishonorable, derog- 
atory, incapable of forming the foundation of any fair and fi-iendiy 
settlement, injurious to the political morality of the nation. I 
Avould not harbor a slavish principle, nor. give it the hospitality of a 
night's lodging in a land of liberty. Slavcr}"^ is like any other vice 
— tolerate, and you embrace. You should guard your constitution 
by settled maxims of honor, as well as wholesome rules of law ; and 
one maxim should be, never to tolerate a condition which trenches 
on the privilege of parliament, or derogates from the pride of the 
island. Liberal in matters of revenue, practicaltle in matters of 
commerce ; on these subjects I would l)e inexoral)ie. If the genius 
of old England came to that bar with the British constitution in one 
hand, and in the other an oftcr of all that England retains, or all 
that she has lost of commerce, I should turn my back on the latter, 
and pay my obeisance to the blessings of her constitution ; for that 
constitution will give you commerce, and it was the loss of that 
constitution that deprived you of commerce. Why are you not now 
a woollen country? because another country regulated j'our trade. 
Why are you not now a country of re-export? because another 
country regulated your navigation. 

I oppose the original terms as slavish, and I oppose the condi- 
tional clause as an artful way of introducing slavery, of soothing a 
high-spirited nation into submissi<m by the ignominious delusion, 
that she may shake off the yoke when she pleases, and become once 
more a free people. The direct unconstitutional proposition could 
not have been listened to, and therefore resort is had to the only 
possible chance of destroying the liberty of the people, by holding 
lip the bright reversion of the British constitution, and the specula- 
tion of future liberty, .as a consolation for the present submission. 
But would any gentleman here wear a livery to-night, because he 
might lay it aside in the morning? or would this House substitute 
another, because next year it might resume its authority, and once- 
more become the Parliament of Ireland? I do not believe w© shall 
get the British, but I do not want to make an experiment on the 
British market, by making an experiment likewise on the constitu- 
tion and spirit of the people of Ii-eland. But do not imagine, if you 
shall yield for a year, you will get so easily clear of this inglorious 
experiment ; if this is not the British market, why accejDt the adjust- 



^E^^lY grattan. 569 

ment? and if it is, the benefit thereof may take away your delilier- 
ate voice. You will be bribed out of your constitution l)y your 
couimcrce : there are two ways of talking awa}' free will, the one by 
direct compulsion, the other by establishing a prepollent motive. 
Thus, a servant of the Crown may lose his free will, when he is to 
give his vote at the liazard of his office : and thus a parliament 
would lose its free will, if it acted under a conviction that it exer- 
cised its deliberate function at the risk of its commerce. No ques- 
tion would stand upon its own legs, but each question would involve 
every consideration of trade, and, indeed, the whole relative situa- 
tion of the two countries. I beseech you to consider that situation, 
and contemplate the powers of your own country, before you agree 
to surrender thcni. Recollect tliat you have now a right to trade 
with the British piantatinns, i.i certain I'.rticlcs, without reference to 
British duties ; that j'ou have a right to trade with the British plan- 
tations in every other article, subject to the British duties; that you 
have a right to get clear of each and of every part of that bargain ; 
that you have a right to take the produce of foreign plantations, 
subject to your own unstipulated duties ; that you have a right to 
cai'ry on a free and unqualified trade with the United States of 
North America ; that you have a riglit to carry on an experimental 
trade in countries contiguous to which Great Britain has established 
her monopolies : the power of trade this, and an instrument of 
power and station, and authority, of the Bi-itish empire ! Consider 
that you have likewise a right to the exclusive supply of your own 
market, and to the exclusive reserve of the rudiment of your manu- 
factures ; that you have an absolute dominion over the public purse 
and over the collection of the revenue. 

If you ask me how you shall use these powers, I say : For Ire- 
knd, with due regard to the Hritish nation. Let them be governed 
by the sjiirit of concord, ;jnd with fidelity to the connection. But 
when the mover of the bill asks me to surrender those powers, I am 
astonished at him. I have neither ears, nor eyes, nor functions, to 
make such a sacrifice. What ! that free trade, for which we exerted 
every nerve in 1779 ; that IVee constitution, for which we pledged 
life and fortune in 1782! Our lives are at the service of the em- 
pire ; but our liberties ! No : we received them from our Father 
which is in Heaven, and we will hand them down to our children I 



570 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

But if gentlemen can entertain a doubt of the mischief of these prop- 
ositions, arc they convinced of their safct}' — the safety of giving 
up the government of your trade? No; the mischief is prominent, 
but the advantage is of a most enigmatical nature. Have gentlemen 
considered the subject? have they traced even the map of the coun- 
tries, the power or freedom of trading with whom they are to sur- 
render forever? Have they traced the map of Asia, Africa, and 
America? Do they know the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and 
Spanish settlements? Do they know the neutral powers of those 
countries, their produce, aptitudes, and dispositions? Have they 
considered the state of North America — its present state, future 
growth, and every opportunity in tlic endless succession of time at- 
tending that nurse of commerce and asylum of mankind? Are they 
now competent to declare on the part of themselves and ail their 
posterit}", that a free trade to those regions will never, in the etiiux 
of time, be of any service to the kingdom of Ireland? If they have 
information on this subject, it must be by a communication with 
Ood, for they liavc none with man : it must be Inspiration, for it 
cannot be knowledge. In such circumstances, to subscribe this 
agreement, without knowledge, without even tiie aflcctation of 
knowledge, when Great Britain, with all her experience, and every 
means of information from East Indies, West Indies, America, and 
with the official knowledge of Ireland at her feet, has taken six 
months to deliberate, and has now produced twenty resolutions, 
with a history to each, amounting to a code of empire, not a system 
of commerce : I say, in such circumstances, for Ireland to su])scribe 
this agreement, Avould be infatuation — an infatuation to which the 
nation could not be a party, but would appear to be concluded, or 
indeed huddled, with all her posterity, into a fallacious airangcmcnt, 
by the influence of the Crown, without the deliberation of Parlia- 
ment or the consent of the people ! This would appear the more 
inexcusable, because we are not driven to it; adjustment is not in- 
dispensable ; the great points have been carried ! An inferior ques- 
tion al)out the home market has been started, and a commercial 
fever artiticially raised; but while the great points remain undis- 
turbed, the nations cannot be committed ; the manufacturers applied 
for protecting duties, and have failed ; the minister offered a system 
of reciprocity, and succeeded in Ireland, but has failed in England; 



HENRY GRATTAN. 571 

he makes you another offer, inconsistent with the former, which 
offer the English do not support, and the Irish deprecate. 

Wc can go on ; we have a growing prosperity, and as yet an ex- 
emption from intolerable taxes ; we can from time to time regulate 
our own commerce, cherish our manufactures, keep down our taxes, 
and bring on our people, and brood over the growing prosperity of 
young Ireland. In the mean time we will guard our free trade and 
free constitution, as our only real resources ; they were the struggles 
of great virtue, the result of much perseverance, and our broad l)ase 
of public action ! We should i-ecollect that this House may now, 
with peculiar propriety, interpose, because j'ou did, with great zeal 
and success, on this very subject of trade, bring on the people ; and 
you did, with great prudence and moderation, on another occasion, 
check a certain description of the people, and you arc now called 
upon by consistency to defend the people. Thus mediating between 
extremes, you will preserve this island long, and preserve her with 
a certain degree of renown. Thus faithful to the constitution of the 
country, you will command and insure her tranquility ; for our best 
authority with the people is protection afforded against the ministers 
of the Crown. It is not public clamour, but public injury that should 
alarm you ; your high ground of expostulation with your fellow-sub- 
jects has been your services ; the free trade 3'(ju have given the mer- 
chant, and the free constitution you have given the island ! IMakc 
your third great effort — preserve them, and with them preserve un- 
altered your own calm sense of public right, the dignity of the ])ar- 
liamcnt, the majesty of the peoj^le, and the powers of the island! 
Keep them unsullied, uncovenanted, uncircumscribed, and unstipen- 
diary ! These paths are the paths to glory, and, let me add, these 
■ways are the ways of peace : so shall the prosperity of your country, 
though without a tongue to thank you, yet laden with the blessings 
of constitution and of commerce, bear attestation to your services, 
and \vait on your progress with involuntary praise ! 



572 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Anti-Union Speeches. 



Januaky 15, 1800. 

Mr. Egan had just risen to speak, when Mr. Grattiin entered the House, supported 
(in couseqiience of illness) by Mr. W. B. Ponsonby and Mr. Artluir Moore.* He 
took the oaths and liis seat, and after Mr. Egan had conchided, in consequence of 
illness being obliged to speak sitting, lie addressed the House as follows : — 

^^pIR, The gentleman who spoke last but one (Mr. Fox) has spoken 
1^^ the pamphlet of the English minister — I answer that minister. 
|V He has published two celel)ratecl productions, in both of which 
\, he declares his intolerance of the constitution of Ireland. He 
concurs with the men Avhom he has hanged, in thinking the con- 
stitution a grievance, and differs from them in the remedy only ; 
they proposing to substitute ti republic, and he proposing to sub.sti- 
tute the yoke of the British Parliament ; the one turns rebel to the 
King, the minister a rebel to the constitution. 

We have seen him inveigh against their projects, let us hear him 
in defence of his own. He denies in the face of the two nations ti 
public fact registered and recorded ; he disclaims the final adjustment 
of 1782, and he tells you that this final adjustment was no more than 
an incipient train of negotiation. The sottleraent of which I speak 
consists of several parts, ever}' part a record, establishing on the 
whole two grand positions. First, the admission of Ireland's claim 
to be legislated for by no other parliament I)nt that of Ireland. 
Secondly, the finality imposed upon the two nations, regarding all 
constitutional projects affecting each other. On the admission of 

* The reporters who have transmitted the account of the debates of tlio day, 
state, " Never was beheld a scene more solemn; an indescribable emotion seized 
the House and gallery, and every heart heaved in tributary pulsation to the name, 
virtues, and the return to parliament of the founder of the constitution of 17S2; the 
existence of which was then the subject of debate." 



HENRY GRATTAN. 573 

that claim, the first tracts of this adjustment are two messages sent 
by his majesty to the parliaments of the different countries, to come 
to a final adjustment, in order to remove the discontents and jeal- 
ousies of the Irish ; the second, the answer of the Parliament of 
Ireland to His majesty's message, declaring, among other causes of 
discontent and jealous}', one great, capital, principal, and fundamental 
cause, namely, the interposition of the Paidiament of Great Britain 
in the Icgishitive regulation of Ireland, accompanied with a solemn 
protest against that interposition, and with a claim of right on the 
part of Ii'eland — not of the Parliament of Ireland only, but of the 
people of the realm, whose ancient and unalienable inheritance it 
was stated in that address to ])e — a perpetual exemption against the 
interference of the Parliament of Great Britain, or that of any other 
Parliament, save only the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland. 
The third part of this adjustment was a resolution voted by the two 
British Houses of Parliament, in consequence of said address trans- 
mitted by His Majesty for their consideration. There were two 
resolutions transmitted ; the first, that the 6th of George I., con- 
taining the claim of interference by the British Parliament, sliould 
be repealed; tlie second, that the connection between the countries 
should be placed by mutual consent, on a solid and permanent 
foundation. The third part of the covenant was, the address of the 
two Houses of the Irish Parliament upon the consideration of these 
tw'O resolutions ; which address does, among other things, accept of 
the proposition contained in the first resolution, and does expressly 
reject the second ; for it says, that we conceive the resolution for 
unqualilicd and unconditional repeal of the Gth of George I. to be a 
measure of consummate wisdom. 

I di'Bw that address, and I introduced those words expressly to 
exclude any subsequent qualifications or limitations, affecting to clog 
or restrain the operations of that repeal and the plenitude of the 
legislative autiiority of the Irish Parliament. The address adds the 
clause of finality ; for instance, that, gratified in these particulars 
which it states, no " constitutional question between the two nations 
will any longer exist." 

The next part was the measure adopted by the English Parliament 
upon the consideration of this address ; and in that measure they ac- 
cede to that address entirely and unequivocall}' ; they embrace our 



574 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

proposition of unconditional and unqualified repeal ; and they accord- 
ingly introduce a bill for that purpose ; and thus they close the final 
adjustment; our address, though no partof their resolutions, becom- 
ing part of their covenant ; as their bill of repeal, though no part of 
our acts, became part of our treaty. 

Another instrument in the transaction is the address to His Excel- 
lency the Lord-Lieutenant, touching the finality of this measure, in 
which are these words : " We have seen this great national arrange- 
ment established on a basis which secures and unites the interests of 
both kingdoms ; the objects we have been laboring for have been 
accomplished." 

The next is the declaration of the Irish government, touching the 
finality of that arrangement, "convince the people that every cause 
of past jealousy and discontent is finally removed, and that both 
countries have pledged their good faith to each other, and that their 
best security will be their inviolable adherence to this compact." 
There are two other parts which are material ; the resolution of the 
Irish House of Commons, the 18th of June, declaring in substance 
that the question was not now to be opened, and that the business 
was done, and in these words, that leave to bring in a bill of right 
was refused, because the right of legislation in the Irisii Parliament 
in all cases had been already asserted by Ireland, and fully and 
finally and irrevocably acknowledged by Great Britain. 

The next instrument was an address to His Majesty, to beseech 
him to appoint a day of public thanksgiving for tlie accomplishment 
of these great olijects, as well as for his victories. Thus it appears 
that whatever idea might have been conceived in the second resolu- 
tion of the 17th of Alay, 1782, it was totally and entirely aban- 
doned. The minister of that time probably intended to make the 
best bargain he could for England, and therefore conceived it eligible 
to condition and qualify the acknowledgment of the indejocndency of 
the Irish Parliament by certain provisions respecting navigation, 
etc. ; but finding that the Irish Parliament would accept of nothing 
but the unqualified and unconditional repeal, he dropped the fruit- 
less idea. I cannot presume to state his sentiments, but I can state 
that the Irish proposition of unqualified and unconditional repeal, re- 
jecting the idea of further measures, was adopted in England by her 
Parliament, which embraced the Irish proposition of unqualified and 



HENRY GRATTAN. 575 

unconditional repeal of the Gth of George I., and did repeal it ac- 
cordingly without qualitication, condition, or limitation. 

I l)c<i; leave to mention two facts, which, thongh not recorded, are 
not forgotten ; the one is a declaration by Lord Lansdowne, then 
secretary of state, that the repeal of the Gth George I. was the only 
measure he meant to propose ; the other was a declaration by the 
representative of the Irish government, in the Irish House of Com- 
mons, made after our address of the 27th of May, that no measures 
were mteuded to be grounded on the second English resolution of 
May 17th. I remember the question to have been asked and so 
answered. 

I think I have now shown, from the records quoted, that the argu- 
ment of the minister is against the express letter, the evident mean- 
ing and honest sense of this final settlement, and I beg leave to 
repeat that finality was not only a part of the settlement, but one of 
its principal objects. The case is still stronger against him ; finality 
was the jirincipal object of his country, as legislative independency 
was the obj; ct of ours. Ireland wished to seize the moment of her 
strength for the establishment of her liberties ; the court of England 
wished to conclude the operations of that sirength and bind its 
progress. The one country wished to establish her liberty, the other 
to check the growth of demand ; I say the growth of demand ; it was 
the expression of the time. The court of England came, therefore, 
to an agreement with this country, namely, to establish forever the 
free and independent existence of the Irish Parliament, and to pre- 
serve forever the unity of empire. The former by the above- 
mentioned adjustment, the latter by the clause of finality to that 
adjustment annexed, and by precluding then, and at all times to 
come, the introduction of any further constitutional questions in 
either country, affecting the connection which was to rest under 
solcum covenant, inviolaI)lc, impregnable, and invincible to the in- 
trigue or ambition of cither country, founded on the prudent, the 
profound, the liberal, and the eternal principle of unity of empire 
and separation of parliament. 

I might, however, waive all this, and yet the minister would get 
nothing. I might allow, contrary to common sense, that final adjust- 
ment, as proposed by His Majesty, means incipient negotiation. I 
will suppose, contrary to truth, to public faith, public honor, and 



57G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

common policy, that the councils of Great Britain at that time meant 
to leave the Irish constitution open to the encroachments of the Brit- 
ish Parliament, and the British empire open to the cnt-roachmenls of 
the Irish vohinteer ; tliat is, that she meant to expose the solidity of 
her- empire, in order to cheat the Irish, first, of their opportunity, 
and afterwards of their constitution ; and yet he has gained nothing 
by these preposterous concessions, because he must allow thr.t the 
arrangement did proceed to certain articles of covenant, and the first 
article on the part of England excludes his Union, being the assent 
of the Pailiament of Great Britain to the requisition of the peo[)le of 
Ireland, which was to I)c exempted in all times to come from the in- 
terference of British Parliaments, and to have established over them 
no other legislature whatever, save only that of the King, Lords, 
and Commons of Ireland. Admitting, then, the ridiculous idea of 
ulterior measures to follow final adjustment, a Union could not be 
one of them. It is hardly necessary to mention that he has beeii 
minister ever since that period ; that during the whole of that time 
he never ventured to name Union as one of those measures ; not in 
1783, Mhcn a bill was brought in by the ministry ; not in 1785, when 
be introduced his celebrated propositions, and slated the second 
resolutions of the 17th of May, 1782, to comprehend, not the consti- 
tution, but the commer'ce of both countries; not in the administra- 
tion of 17t5 ; not, in short, until he had reduced this country by a 
train of calamitous measures, to religious divisions, to the condition 
of a conquest, such as she was when the Parliament of England, at 
the close of the last centur}', took away her trade, and in the middle 
of the present took away her constitution. 

The minister proceeds; he impeaches the constitution of 1782; 
from disavowing an arrangement so adjusted at tlnit time, and an 
adjustment so concluded, he advances, and calls that adjustment a 
miserable imperfection ; after fifteen years' panegyric, and when ho 
has a great army in Ireland, he has made that discover^s and 
instead of a constitution which established peace in Ireland, he 
revives a principle which produced war in America; namely, that 
two independent legislatures are incomi)atible. This was the lan- 
guage of Lord North's sword in the colonies ; this is the language 
of Mr. Pitt's sword in Ireland : and this doctrine of imperial legis- 
lature Avhich lost Great Britain America, and which Great Britain 



HENRY GEATTAN. 577 

surrendered to Ireland, takes once more its bloody station in the 
speeches of the minister, in defiance of faith, and in contempt of 
•experience. It seems as a British Parliament is disposed to surren- 
der its liberties to the court, the court is disposed to advance its 
domination over all the British connections; similarity of constiiu- 
tions is no longer the bond of connection ; all are to be swallowed 
up, according to this doctrine, in one imperial parliament, whose 
powers increase as the boundaries of the empire contract and the 
spirit of her liberties declines. 

"You abolished," says he, "one constitution, but you forgot to 
form another." * Indeed ! What ! docs he mean that we should 
have demolished an usurpation, in order to mangle a constitution? 
Does he mean that we should have overset the tyranny of one pMriia;- 
ment to mangle another? Does he mean that we should have taken 
away the usurped and tyrannical powers of the legislature of Eng- 
land, in order to restore those usurped and tyrannical powers to that 
very legislature ? In what brandies ? His propositions have stated 
them ; commerce, etc., the very branches in which they had been by 
that very legislatui'e, most oppressively and egregiously, obstinately, 
and transcendently abused. Most certainly the conductors of that 
settlement on the part of Ireland, did not think proper so to restore 
the gi'ievance of a foreign legislation, and so to limit the powers of 
a domestic one. The minister has given in his speech the reason. 
"All the great branches of trade (by which he must mean the linen 
trade, the plantation trade, and the import trade) are ascribed to 
the liberality of England, not to covenant." I deny it ; but as 
ministers may deny covenants, it seemed prudent to reserve the 
powers of parliament, and accordingly the Irish legislature retains 
full and ample resources, under the settlement of that tinie, to 
incline the counsels of England to reinember and observe her com- 
pacts with our countiy, should the British minister be disposed to 
forget them ; thus the parliament of Ireland can so regulate her in- 
tercourse with other countries for colonial produce, so regulate her 
right to an East India trade, and so adjust her channel trade, as to 
secure a preference in the English market for her linens, and for a 
■direct intercourse with the British plantations. Was Ireland to 
retain those powers with a view to annoy ? No ; but she was to 
♦ Mr. Pitt's speech. 



578 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

retain them, and to retain tliem, lest Great Britain, instigated by 
some minister, might be induced to exercise once more those very 
powers of annoyance with which now the right honorable gentleman 
threatens Ireland ; in short, lest Great Britain should retain all her 
poAvers of molestation, and Ireland should surrender all her powers 
of retaliation. The classic minister must know, Tacitus has told 
bim, that between the powerful and the impotent there can be no 
peace ; the powers I speak of were powers of peace ; they were 
powers of protection ; they were the great reserves of the Irish Par- 
liament, to secure the trade of Ireland and the harmony of the 
empire ; the wisdom of the reserve, such a minister as he is was born 
to establisi). Strange ideas this minister entertains of the constitu- 
tion of an Irish Parliament. It should be incompetent, it should be 
onuiipotent ; incompetent to regulate the commerce of the country, 
omnipotent to give away her constitution : it finds its omnii)otence 
in his mind when it abdicates its trust. 

The minister proceeds : he specifies his objections to this settle- 
ment of 1782 ; the case of regency is one, and war is another. 
Facts are against him in both. He states that it was accident alone, 
meaning the recovery of his Majesty, that preserved the identity of 
the executive power at the time of the regency ; he misstates that 
fact totally and entirely ; it was not accident, namely, the recovery 
of the King, that preserved the identity of the executive powers ; 
that identity was preserved amply, carefully, and aficctionately, by 
the determination of the Irish Parliament in choosing for their regent 
the heir apparent of the Crown, already designated and determined 
upon, though not in form invested, by the Parh'ament of Great 
Britain. The Parliament of Ireland provided in that event not only 
for the preservation of the monarchical principle, but for tiie preser- 
vation of the connection likewise, and adhered to liis countr}', 
though they did not link themselves to his party. The principle 
that came under the consideration of the Irish Parliament was three- 
fold, — the principle of monarchy, the principle of connection, and 
the principle of party. With regard to the two first, they concurred 
with the Parliament of England ; they chose as regent tlie next in 
succession to the Crown, and they chose him after, and not before, the 
Parliament of Great Britain had signified, with the minister at their 
head, their determination to appoint him, and in so doing they fol- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 579 

lowed faithfully tlie spirit of the act of annexation of the crown, 
which forms between the two countries their bond and connection, 
but a bond and connection through the medium of monarchy. I am 
stating the spirit of that act. I say, the act of annexation, and so 
the bill of 1782, altering and amending the act of Poynings, and 
ordaining that Irish bills shall be sent to the King, look to the 
bond and connection of these islands through the medium of mon- 
archy. A British republic never was in the contemplation of either ; 
but an English monarchy, and no other form of government, was 
present to the conceptions of both, either giving thereby the royal 
house, who are the monarchs of Ireland as well as of Great Britain, 
a double security, and the throne upon which they sit a double root. 
I sa}' the Parliament of Ireland did adhere to the principles of 
British connection, and did unite with them the safe and the pre- 
scribed principles of monarchical government. They did concur 
with the Parliament of England in the choice of a regent, in the 
person of his Eoyal Highness the Prince of Wales. But with 
regard to the third principle, namely, the principle of party, they 
diiu-rcd ; the Parliament of England tlunking proper to incumber 
the regent with extraordinary limitations, and that of Ireland judg- 
ing it more eligible to leave him in full exercise of all the execu- 
tive powers. It therefore rejected a motion of delay, knowing the 
object of that motion was to postpone the appointment until the then 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland should have formed a formidable faction 
confedei'atcd against the future goveriunent. In short, the Parlia- 
ment of Ireland did not think it proper to appoint a regent with less 
than regential power, and to constitute in opposition a minister with 
great portions of regal authority. Hence, perhaps, this Union ; 
hence, perhaps, the visitation of calamitous government which has 
befallen Ireland ever since. One of the minister's instruments in 
this country has confessed it; he has said, in one of his speeches 
published b}' his authority, that all the misfortunes of this country 
sprung from that resentful period. But who is it that reproaches 
Ireland upon this subject, most injuriously and unjustly, with the 
crime of availing herself of the opportunity afforded by the most 
calamitous event that visited the health of our sovereign? it is that 
very minister who published that opportunity in the broadest and 
most unqualified resolution ; who told the parliament of both coun- 



580 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tries, that they were perfectly competent to supply, in that melan- 
choly moment, the deliciency in the executive magistrate by any 
method which they thought proper; that is, who told the British 
Houses they were competent to establish a temporary republic; and 
told the Irish Houses, of course and by necessary inference, that 
they were competent to establish a temporary republic, and to 
accomplish a temporary separation. To have declined the oppor- 
tunity is called the ambition of one parliament; to have proclaimed 
the opportunity, is called the moderation of the minister. His par- 
tizans in this country went furtiier ; he maintained the power of the 
British convention to bind Ireland : — 

lUe impiger hausit 
Spuraautem patoram et pleuo proluit se auro. 

According to the two opinions, the two Houses of the British Parlia- 
ment could overturn the British monarchy and Irish constitution. 

The minister proceeds ; he states a second instance, namel}', that 
of war. Hei'e, again, the fact is against him ; the Parliament of 
Ireland have, ever since their emancipation, concurred with England 
on the subject of war ; but tiiey have concurred, with this remarkable 
difi'erence, that, before their emancipation, their concurrence was 
barren, and since their emancipation it has been productive. Imme- 
diately on the settlement of that emancipation in 1782, they voted a 
sum for British seamcri, and on the apprehension of a war with Spain 
in 1730, they voted another; and in the present war, under Lord 
Fitzwilliam's administration, they voted a third ; so much more bene- 
ficial are the wild offerings of liljcrtjs than the squeczings, and evisce- 
rations, and excruciations of power. But all this is lost uijon the 
minister; fact and bounty make no impression on hiui; he has 
against both a fallacious argument and hungiy speculation. 

He thinks that he foresees that the Parliament of Ireland may dissent 
from that of Great Britain on the subject of war. lie iuiows that 
peace and war are in the department of the King, not of Parliament ; 
he knows that, on u proclamation by His Majest}', Ireland is in a 
state of war, of course, and without the assent of the Houses of 
Parliament ; he knows th it the supply of that war depends not on the 
Parliament of Ireland, but of Great Britain ; and therefore the inlcr- 
ference of the Parliament of Ireland on that subject is little more 



HENRY GRATTAN. 581 

than the declaration of a sentiment. Now, the declaration of a sen- 
timent on such a subject is only valuable as it is the sentiment of the 
nation ; and the concurrence of Ireland in British wars can only be 
the sentiment of the nation as the constitution of the nation: that is 
to say, the rights of Ireland, as claimed by herself, to be exempted 
from the legislative authority of a British Parliament, are tendered, 
regarded and protected by the Briiish empire. It is not the Isle of 
Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, the Mysoi-c country, nor the domin- 
ions of Tippno, nor yet the feathers of her western wing, that 
engage the attention or interests of Ireland ; it is her own freedom and 
constitution: it is our own idea of that internal freedom and constitu- 
tion, not such as British ministers, who have invaded that constitution, 
shall hold forth ; nor such as English or Scotch metaphysicians, who 
made chains for America, and called them her constitution, and 
who are ready now to cast links for Ireland ; but that constitution 
which she herself, Ireland, feels, comprehends, venerates and claims ; 
such as she herself expressed in her convention at Dungannon, and 
through all her counties and cities, and in every description and 
association of people, and afterwards in full parliament claimed, ear- 
ned, registered and recorded ; it is for the preservation of this con- 
stitution that she is interested in British wars. She considers the 
British empire a great western barrier against invasion from other 
countries ; invasion on wliat? invasion on her liberties, on her rights 
and privileges ; invasion on self-legislation, the parent and protect- 
ress of them all. She hears the ocean protesting against separation, 
but she hears the likewise protesting against Union ; she follows, 
therefore, her physical destination, and obeys the dispensations of 
Providence, when she protests, like that sea, against the two situa- 
tions, both equally unnatural, separation and union. 

On these principles, I suppose the dissent of Ireland, on the sub- 
ject of war, highly improbable, as it is uninstanced; but I should 
attribute like the minister, infallibility to those councils that engage 
their country in a war, should I suppose the dissent of Ireland on 
such a sul J3ct at all times to be fatal. Happy had it been for his 
Majesty, happy had it been for his glory and renown in all time to 
come, had not the Parliament of Ireland, in an American war, cursed 
him with her concurrence ! What could the tutelary angel of Eng- 
land have done more, if that angel had been Minerva, and that 



582 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Minerva sat in Parliament; wliat, than to have advanced against tho 
councils of that time the shield of her displeasure? Looking hack 
to the wars in which Great Britain has been engaged, I slionid there- 
fore suggest that she is in less danger from the hesitation of Ireland 
than from the precipitation of Great Britain. In this part of his 
argument the minister is weak, but in his remedy he is not only weak, 
but mischievous. He proposes, by taking away our powers of dis- 
sent, to withdraw our motive of concurrence, and, to secure our 
silence, forfeits our affection ; he foresees an improbable event ; of 
that event he greatly' exaggerates tho danger, and provides a remedy 
which makes that danger not only imminent, but deadly. 

I will put this question to my country ; I will suppose her at (ho 
bar, and I will ask her : Will you fight for a Union as you would for 
a constitution? Will you tight for that Lords and that Conmions, 
who in the last century took away your trade, and in the present 
your constitution, as for that King, Lords and Commons, \vho have 
restored both? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitution ; 
to destroy is easy; the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of 
marble, require an age to build, but ask only a minute to precipi- 
tate ; and, as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it 
a business of any strength ; a pickaxe and a common laborer will 
do the one — a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked minister tho 
other. 

The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been tho 
inheritance of this country for GOO years ; that modus (enendi parlia- 
meuluin, which lasted and outlasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor 
the violence, and of Stuart the systematic falsehood ; the condition 
of our connection — yes — the constitution he destroys — is one of 
the pillars of the British empire. He may walk round it and round 
it, and the more he contemplates, the more must he admire ; such a 
one as had cost England of money millions and of bloo'd a deluge — 
cheaply and nobly expended ; whose restoration Lad cost Ireland her 
noblest eflbrts, and was the habitation of her loya]t3' ; we arc accus- 
tomed to behold the kings of these countries in the keeping of par- 
liament ; I say of her loj^alty as well as of her liberty, where she had 
hung up the sword of the volunteer, her temple of fame, as well as 
of freedom ; where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in 
modest security and in a long repose. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 583 

I hnvc done with the pile which the minister batters. I eomc to 
the Bal)el which he builds ; and as he throws down without a princi- 
ple, so docs he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls 
a Union, and to this his fabric there are two striking objections : 
first, it is no Union : it is not an identification of people, for it 
•excludes the Cati'.olics ; secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish 
legislatures, that is to say, a merger of the Irish Parliament ; and 
incurs every objection to a Union, without obtaining the only object 
which a Union professes: it is an extinction of the constitution, and 
an exclusion of the people. Well ! he has overlooked the pco[)le as 
he has overlooked the sea. I say ho excludes the Catholics, and ho 
destro3-s their best chance of admission — the relative consequence. 
Thus he reasons, that hereafter, in a course of time (he does not say 
when), if they behave tiiemselvcs (he does not say how), they may 
see their subjects submitted to a course of discussion (he does not 
say with what result or determination) ; and as the ground for this 
inane period, in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he did 
jjromise much, at so remote a period he could perform nothing, unless 
he, like the evil he has accomplished, be immortal — for this inane 
sentence, in which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or 
suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, ho exhibits no other ground 
than the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a 
Union, which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it 
destroys the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and thus 
tliey become admissible because they cease to be anything. Hence, 
according to him, their brilliant expectation: "You were," say his 
advocates, and so imports his argument, "before the Union as three 
to one, 3'ou will be by the Union as one to four." Thus he founds 
their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical conse- 
•qnence, and makes the inanity of their body and the nonentity of 
their country the pillars of their future ambition. 

The Catholics of the city of Dublin have come forth in support of 
the constitution. I rejoice at it. They have answered their enemies 
by the best possible answer — by services. Such answer is more 
than refutation — it is triumph. The man who supports and pre- 
serves parliament qualifies ; the path of glory leads on to privilege ; 
■"enjoy with me, if you please; without me, if you be illiberal ; but 
by me certainly ; and at all events enjoy the parliamentary constitu- 



584 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

tioii of your country." This is to defend the tower, this is to leap 
upon the wrecii, this is to sit beside the country in her sick bed ; if 
she recover, there is a long ;uid bright order of days before her, and 
the Catholics will have contributed to that event ; if she perish, they 
will have done their utmost to save her ; they will have done as an 
honcsi m;ui ought in such an extreme case — they will iiave flung out 
their last setting glories, and sunk witii their country. 

The minister, by liis first plans, as detailed by his advocates, not 
only banished the Catholics from parliament, but banished the Prot- 
estants from it likewise, for he banished them from a due represen- 
tation therein ; he struck off one half of the county representatives, 
and preserved the portion of boroughs as two to one. Thus he dis- 
posed of the question of Catiiolic emancipation and parliamentary 
reform, by getting rid of both forever; thus did he build his first 
plan of Union upon the abuses both of church and state, and reformed 
ncitiur; religious monopoly or borough monopoly, he continued ta 
exclude the Catholic from parliament ; and he continued to shut out 
both Protestant and Catholic from a due and effectual parliamentary 
representation. lie shut out Protestant ascendancy as well as Cath- 
olic participation : and in the place of both, constituted borough 
ascendancy in perpetual abuse and dominion. He reformed the- 
British Parliament Ijy nearly sixty Irish borough members ; he 
reformed the Irish Parliament by 558 Englisii and Scotch members j 
and on this mutual misrepresentation, constituted an imperial legis- 
lature. There was no gr. at effort of ability in all this ; much felicity 
of mischief, no expenditure either of time or talent. There was 
nothing in the scheme which was grand, nothing which was deep,. 
nothing which was comprehensive; he demolished an old insti- 
tution at the same time that he preserved old abuses, and put 
himself at their head, and entailed them on posterity, like a com- 
mon disorder, to be continued through what he calls a pa- 
rental parliament. Such a plan was too desperate, as far as 
relates to the proportion of comities and boroughs. I under- 
stand it is in part abandoned, and well it may, because, whether 
these representatives bo in a greater or lesser proportion borough 
members, they will be the host of administration, and not the repre- 
sentatives of the people. He takes 100 members, many of whom are 
removed by the nature of their election from the influence of repre- 



HENRY GRATTAN. 585 

seiilation ; all of whom, hy i-cm()\'al from their country, are with- 
drawn from that of sympathy, from that of opinion. He changes 
the sphere, not only of their action, hut of tlieir character and of 
their sensations. How cinno the Irish Parliament, with all its bor- 
ough members, in 1779, to demand a free trade — in 1782, to demand 
a free constitution ? Because it sat in Ireland ; because they sat ill 
their own country ; and because at tiiat time they had a country ; 
because, however influenced as many of its members were by places,^ 
however uninfluenced as man}'^ of its mem!)ers were by pojjular 
representation, yet Avere they influenced by Irish sympathy. They 
did not like to meet every hour faces that looked shame upon them r 
they did not like to stand in the sphere of their own infamy ; thus- 
they acted as the Irish absentee at the very same time did not act ; 
they saved the countiy because they lived in it, as the others aban- 
doned ihc country because the}*^ lived out of it. 

I will not say that one hundred Irish gentlemen will act ill, where 
any man would act well ; but never was there a situation in which 
they had so much temptation to act ill, and so little to act well ; 
gnat expense and consequent distresses ; no support from the voice 
of an Irish public ; no check ; they will be in situation a sort of 
gentlemen of the empire ; tliat is to sa^-, gentlemen at large, absent 
from one country, and unelccted by the other — suspended between 
both, and belDUging to neither. The sagacious English Secretary 
of State has foretold this: "What advantage," says he, "will it be 
to the talents of Ireland, this opportunity in the British em})ire thus- 
opened?" That is what we dread. The market of St. Stephen 
opened to the individual, and the talents of the country, like its 
property, dragged from the kingdom of Ireland to be sold in London ; 
these men, from their situation (man is the child of situation), their 
native honor may struggle ; but from their situation, they will be 
adventurers of the mostexpensive kind ; adventurers with pretensions, 
dressed and sold, as it were, in the shrouds and grave-clothes of the 
Irish Parliam' nt, and playing for hire their tricks on her tomb, the 
only repository the minister will allow to an Irish Constitution, the 
image of degradation, and the representatives of nothing. 

Come, he has done much ; he has destroyed one constitution ; ho 
Las corrupted another; and this corrupted constitution he calls a 
parental representation. I congratulate the country on the new 



586 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

baptism of what was onco called the representative body of tho 
nation. Instead of the plain, august language of the constitntion, 
wc arc here saluted willi the novel and barbaric phraseology of 
empire. Witli this change of name we perceive a transfer of obliga- 
tion, converting the duty of the delegate into the duty of tlio 
constituent, and the inheritance of the people into the inlieritance of 
their trustees. 

AVell, this assembly, this Imperial Parliament, what arc its 
elements? Irish absentees, who have forsaken their country, and 
a British Parliament tiiat toolj away the constitution. Docs he say 
that sucli a parliament will have no prejudices against Ireland? Let 
him look to his speeches; a capital understanding, a comprclicnsivc 
knowledge, and ii transcendent eloquence ; hear him with all tlicsc 
powers .speak on the subject of Ireland, whether it be the conduct of 
her aduiiuistratiou, tho character of her people, her commerce, or 
her covenants, or her constituticni, and he betrays an ignorance tiiat 
would dishonor an idiot. Docs he wish for further instances ? Let 
him look to the speeches of his agents in Ireland ; speeches made and 
publisiied for the palate and prejudices of the English court: what 
description of men have they not traduced, what patriotic atliicve- 
mcnt have they not dcj)rccatcd, what honest character have they not 
belied? Does he look for further instances? Let him turn to his 
■catalogue: what notorious apostate whom he has not honored? 
what impudent defamer of the rights and character of Ireland that 
he has not advanced? On the other hand, what man that made a 
stand for her liberties whom he has not dismissed? Mv. Fitzgerald, 
■Sir John Parnell, who had supported his government long, rei'uscd 
to abandon their country and their honor, and were innnediatcly told 
they were no longer tit for the service of government. Mr. Foster, 
who had supported his administration long, held up his shield for 
that parliament of which he is the natural advocate, and was imme- 
diately honored by the enmity of the court, and a personal attack on 
his character and consistency. 

Lord Fitzwilliam, an Englishman, a friend to the war, a strenuous 
advocate for order and regular government, with a character that is 
purity itself, entertained for Ireland a fatal aflcction, and by that one 
•offence, cancelled all his long and splendid catalogue of virtues, and 
%vas dismissed accordingly. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 587 

A legislature, the parent of both countries, ho talks of; a legisla- 
ture, as far as relates to Ireland, free from the influence of vicinity, 
of sympathy. The Isle of Man is all that (free from the influence 
of opinion, free from the influence of duty, directed by prejudices, 
and unincumbered by knowledge). In order to judge what this 
parental legislature would be, let us consider what the British 
Parliament has been, and lot us compare that Parliament, for this 
purpose with the legislature of Ireland. In this con)parison I do not 
mean to approve of all the parliaments that have sat in Ireland : I 
left the former parliament, because I condemned its proceedings ; 
but I argue not like the minister, from the misconduct of one parlia- 
ment against the being of parliament itself. 1 value that parliamentary 
constitution by the average of its benefits ; and I affirm that tho 
blessings prcicured by the Iiish Parliament in the last twenty years, 
arc greater than all the blessings afforded by British Parliaments to 
Ireland for the last century : greater even than the mischiefs inflicted 
on Ireland by British Parliaments ; greater than all the blessings 
procured by those parliaments for their own country within that period. 
"Within that time the legislatures of England lost an empire, and 
the legislature of Ireland recovered a constitution. 

Well, wo have done with this parental parliament; and now we 
come to the bribes which he holds out. And, first, he begins with 
tho church. To the Protestant church he promises perpetual secu- 
rity ; to tho Catholic church his advocates promise eventual salary; 
and both hold out to the f()rn)er commutation of tithes. 

"With respect to the Protestant church, whatever may be his 
wishes in favor of ils duration, he takes the strongest measures to 
accomplish its destruction ; for ho attempts to disgrace it to all 
eternity. He is employing, or his agents are employing, several of 
its members to negotiate away the constitution, and ,to mendicate 
addresses transferring to another country the parliament and legis- 
lative power of their own; disfranchising the very people by whom 
the church is fed, and deserting the holy mission of God to fulfil 
this profligate mission of the minister. Give up your country, says 
tho minister ; give up your character, and bo immortal. 80 said 
Charles the First to his church ^vhon he prostituted the Gospel, and 
regiinonted the clergy into battalions against the constitution, and 
overturned the church by its own intiimy. 



588 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

At the same time that the minister eiide.ivors to take away the 
authority of one church, his advocates tell you that he proposes to- 
give salaries to another ; that is, they tell you that he proposes to 
bribe the Catholic clergy, it they will betray the constitution. In 
whatever form of religion our pious court contemplates the Almighty,, 
it ever occurs to convert Him to some diabolical purpose. The 
Catholics had been accused pretty liberally of disloyalty by those 
very advocates who now seem to think it proper to reward their 
imputed treasons against the king, provide d they shall be followed 
lip by real treasons against the peo]ile. I do not believe, I never 
did believe, the general charges made against the Catholics ; I do 
not dispntc, I never did dispute, the propriety' of giving salaries to 
their clergy ; but it should be salaries, not bribes — salaries for the 
exercise of their religious duty, and not wages for the practice of 
l)olitical apostacy. According to. this plan, the Catholic religion, it 
would seem, disqualified its followers to receive the blessings of the 
constitution ; but the priest's hostilities to that constitution qualify 
him to ]'eceivc a salary for the exercise of that very religion which 
is at once punished by civil disal)ility and encouraged by ecclesias- 
tical provision; as good Catholics they are disqualified, and as bad 
citizens they are to bo rewarded. 

The minister proceeds : ho proposes his third bribe, namely, the 
abolition of tithes. You observe, such a proposal does not seem to 
form part of his Union, but is an offer kept back to be regulated, 
modified, and qualified, when the Union is passed, and the consider- 
ation is given. I approve of a modus as a compensation for tithe, 
but I do not approve of it as a compensation for parliament ; Mhen I 
proposed that measure, and was opposed by men by whom I could 
only be opjiosed, and could not be answered, I was told by the king's 
ministers that commutation of tithe was the overthrow of the church. 
Couple the project of the minister now with the argument of his 
agents then, and the combined idea amounts to this, that it is pru- 
dent to overturn the church, provided at the same lime you overturn 
the constitution ; but the fact is, that the argument at that time was 
false, and the proposal at this time is fallacious; the arguincrjt had 
for its object personal calumn}' ; and the proposal, national extinction. 

The minister has not done with bribes ; whatever economy he 
shows in argument, here he has been generous in the extreme. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 589 

Parson, priest (I think one of hi^ advocates hints the Presbyterians) 
are not forgotten ; and now the mercantile body are all to be bi'ibed, 
that all may be ruined. He holds oat commercial benefits for political 
annihilation ; he offers j'ou an abundance of capital, but first he 
takes it away ; he takes away a great portion of the landed capital 
of the country by the necessarj' operation of Union ; he will give 
you, however, commercial capital in its place ; but first he will give 
you taxes. It seems it is only necessary to break the barriers of 
liberty, and the tides of commerce will flow in of coiu-se ; take away 
her rival in landed cai)ital, and then commercial capital advances, 
■without fear. Conmierce only wants weight, i. e., taxes, it seems, 
in order to run with new spirit. He not only finds commerce in the 
retreat of landed capital, but he finds corn also. His whole speech 
is a course of surprises ; the growth of excision, the resource of in- 
cumbrance, and harvests sown and gathered by the absence of the 
proprietors of the soil and of their property. All these things are 
to come. When? He does not toll you. Where? He does not 
tell you. You take his word for all this. I have heard of a banker's 
bill of exchange. Bank of England's notes. Bank of Ireland's notes; 
biit a prophet's promissor}' note is a newtrafiic; all he gets from 
Ireland is our solid loss ; all he promises are visionary, distant, and 
prophetic advantages. He sees, I do not, British merchants and 
British capital sailing to the provinces of Conuanght and Muustcr ; 
there they settle in great multitudes, themselves and families. He 
mentions not what description of manuf icturers ; who from Birming- 
liam ; who from Manchester; no matter, he cares iiot; he goes on 
asserting, and asserting with great ease to himself, and without any 
obligation to fact. Imagination is the region in which he delights 
to disport; where he is to take away y^ur parliament, where he is 
to take away 30ur final judicature, where he is to increase your 
taxes, where he is to get an Irish tribute, there he is a plain, direct, 
matter-of-fact man ; but where he is to pay you for all this, there he 
is poetic and prophetic ; no longer a financier, but an inspired ac- 
countant. Fancy gives her wand ; Amalthca takes him by the 
hand ; Ceres is in her train. 

The English capitalist, he thinks, will settle his family in the 
midst of those Irish Catholics, whom he does not think it safe to admit 
into parliament ; as subjects he thinks them dangerous ; as a neigh- 



590 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

boring multitiulc snfc. The En^<ili.sh inaniifacturcr will make this- 
distinction ; he will dread them as individuals, and confide in them 
as a body, and settle his family and his property in the midst of 
them : he will therefore, the minister supposes, leave his ccjal mines, 
leave his machinery, leave his comforts, leave his habits, conquer his- 
prcjudices, and come over to Ireland to meet his taxes and miss his^ 
constitution. They did not do this when the taxes of Ireland were 
few; we Avcre indeed told they would, as we arc now told. They 
did not do this when there was no military government in Ireland. 
However, as prejudices against the country increase, he supposes 
commercial confidence may increase likewise. Tiiere is no contra- 
dicting all this, because arguments which reason does not suggest, 
reason cannot remove; besides, the minister in all this does not 
argue, but foretell. Now you can scarcely answer a prophet ; yoix 
can only disl)clieve him ; his arguments are false, but his inspi- 
ration may be true ; appearances, however, are against them ; 
for instance, a principal ground of complaint in Ireland is a mis- 
application of landed capital, or the diversion of it to other countries 
from the cultivation of Ireland, where great tracts remain either 
totally neglected or superficially imi)roved ; where the tenantry have 
not capital, and the land can be reclaimed only by the employment 
(and a very rational employment it would be) of part of the rent aris- 
ing therefrom, on the soil which produced it, improving, however, 
gradually smee the establishment of our free constitution, which con- 
tains in itself the power of checking the evil I speak of, and which, 
by adding to the consequence of the country, will naturally diminish 
the number of absentees, comparatively aided as it must be by the 
growth of English taxes, unless by a Union we adopt those taxes in 
Ireland. How does he remedy this disorder ? He finds a great absen- 
tee draught ; he gives you another; and having secured to you two 
complaints, he engages to cure both. Another principal cause of 
complaint, is another effect arising from the non-residence of Irish 
landlords, whose presence on their own estates is necessary for the 
succor as well as the improvement of their tenantry ; that the peas- 
ant may not perish for want of medicine, of cordial and of cure, 
which they can only find in the administration of the landlord, who 
civilizes them and regulates them in the capacity of a magistrate, 
while he husbands and covers them in that of a protector, improving 



HENRY GRATTAN 591 

not only them, but himself, by the exercise of his virtues, as well as 
the dispensation of his property, drawing together the two orders of 
society, the rich and poor, until each may administer to the other, 
and civilize the one by giving, and the other by receiving; so that 
aristocracy and democracy may have a head and a body ; so that 
the rich may bring on the poor, and the poor may strengthen the 
rich; and both contributing to the strength, order and beauty of 
the state, may form that pillar of society where all below is strength 
and all above is grace. How does his plan accomplish this? He 
withdraws their landed gentlemen, and then improves Irish man- 
ners by English factors ; but I leave his trifling, and come to his 
threats. 

As lie offered before a trade which he had not to give, so now he 
menaces to withdraw a trade which he cannot take away ; his threat 
is founded on a monstrous assertion, that our principal branches of 
con)mcrce are due to the liberality of England. 

Liberality of England to Irish conniierce ! Where arc wc to look 
for it? In v,hat part of the century? For near one hundred years 
(it is a long time), the minister himself disclaims the illiberal policy 
of his country. Is it at the close of this century; for instance, in 
His JMajcst3''s speech from the throne in the year 1775, where he is 
advised to signil'y his intention to maintain the principle of American 
taxation over all his dominions? Or is it in the embargo of the 
sami; period? Or is it in the tea tax imposed on Ireland by the 
British Parliament about the period of 1779? Or will he say this 
liberality appears in the mockery of those bills, in which England 
affeclcd to relieve the distresses of Ireland? Was it in the English 
act, giving tlie Irish a power to catch whales, or in that other bill, 
permitting the Irish to plant tobacco? Or was it in 1778 that this 
liberality made his appearance? No : for I remember in that period, 
sup|)orting an address for the extension of Irish commerce ; and I 
remember also being opposed and defeated by the immediate inter- 
positi(m of the Crown. It is not then in the period of 1778 that we 
are to look for this liberality. Was it in the period 1779, the time of 
the short money bill, of the non-colisumptiou agreement, and of the 
Irish requisition of free trade? 

Here is the liberality of England ; she was just then, she was lib- 
eral never; and she was just to you then, because you were then 



592 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCf:. 

just to yourself; she has been faithful siuce ; I for oue shall ))c sat- 
isiied with her lidclity and justice, and on these occasions I acknowl- 
edge both. Are there any furtiier instances in which we are to look 
for English justice in the subject of Irish trade? Yes ; there is an- 
other, in 1793, on the subject of the re-export. An attempt had 
been made to carry that point for Ireland in 1786, contained in two 
resolutions which I moved as an amendment to the navigation act, 
which has been charged to Ireland as a favor, but which was in fact 
jobbed to tlie British ministry by him who made the charge, and 
sold without any clause of equality and reciprocity. But afterwards 
in 1793, a re-export bill passed in Great Britain in fiivor of Ireland, 
exactly at the time when the charter of the East India Company ex- 
pired, and an Irisii bill ^vas necessary and did pass to secure her 
monopoly for a limited time : such is the history of British conces- 
sion. Now look at the tariff, or see what has been tlie result; 
greatly in favor of England. Under the head of home manufacture 
and colonial produce, in favor of England ; under the head of raw 
material, the produce of their respective countries, al)ove two mil- 
lions in favor of England. Under the head of foreign articles, a 
great balance in favor of England. Add to this an absentee rental 
of considerably above a million, and 3'ou will find there is a sum of 
above four millions anmiall}', in which Ireland administers to Great 
Britain, and pours herself, as it were, abundant!}^ and without re- 
serve into the British dominion. 

This is the trade tlie minister threatens to alter, and thinks he 
threatens not Great Britain, but Ireland. Here he will have some 
difficulty; and first, the covenant of 1779. He denies that cove- 
nant ; he says, that all the great commercial advantages of Ireland 
are to be ascribed to the liberality of the British Parliament, and not 
to the Irish Parliament. Wherever he meets an Irish covenant, he 
gives it no quarter. I will state the fact, and let the public judge. 
In October, 1779, an address passed the Irish Commons, containing 
a requisition for a free trade : it was followed by a motion declaring 
that the Irish Commons would not, for the present, grant new taxes ; 
it was followed by a limitation of the act of supply to the duration 
of six months only. It was considered in England, and attended 
with resolutions moved by the then minister, purporting to repeal 
certain restrictive acts on the free trade of Ireland, and to grant a 



HENRY GRATTAN. 593 

■direct intercourse between Ireland and his Majesty's plantations, 
sul)jcct to equality of duty. These resolutions were considered in 
the Parliament of Ireland;* they were voted satisfactory. A long 
money bill was then passed, and new taxes were then granted in 
■consideration thereof, and this he calls no covenant. He has denied, 
at seems, the linen covenant ; ho has denied this commercial covenant 
of 1779 ; and he has denied the constitutional covenant of 1782 ; and 
having disclaimed the obligation of three treaties, he now proposes 
a fourth, in which he desires you to give up j-our parliament to 
secure his faith in time to come. T argue in a different manner : I 
argue from his disposition to dispute the validity of covenant to the 
necessity of the existence of parliament — an Irish parliament — tiie 
guarantee of those covenants, which has the power to preserve the 
obligation, or resources to retaliate. Docs the minister, when he 
talks of an eleemosynary trade, recollect how the Irish Parliament 
•could affect the East India Company by discontinuing the act of 
1793, granted but for a limited time? Docs he recollect how she 
■could affect the British West India monopoly by withdrawing her 
exclusive consumption from the British plantations? Does he recol- 
lect how we could affect the navy of England by regulations regard- 
ing our Irish provisions? Does he recollect how we could affect her 
empire by forming commercial intercourse with the rest of the world ? 
But let not this depend upon idle threats, threats which never should 
have been advanced on our side, if they had not been first most im- 
prudently introduced on his. I say, let not the argument rest on 
threats, but let it rest on the past experiment; the experiment has 
been made ; we got our trade by our resources and our parliament ; 
■we will keep our trade by affection and by covenant. But should a 
British minister choose to despise those tciuires, we have another ; 
■we can keep our trade by the means by which wc have obtained it, 
— our iiarliamcnt, our resources. 

He speaks of the linen trade. On this subject, indeed, he has 
been answered, as he has upon the others, b}' the argument and by 
the experiment ; the ai'gument which proves that the bounty on 
linen was not granted for the sake of Ireland, and that Irish linen 
sells itself. But suppose his reasoning in this case to be as true as 
it is fallacious, what does it amount to? That his country robbed 
* Seo the resolutious and the law expressing the condition auci covenant. 



594 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Ireland of her free trade in the last century, and gave her, in the 
place of it, the export of one solitary manufacture, depending on 
the charity of England ; and now he proposes to rob Ireland of that 
manufacture, unless Ireland consents to be robbed of her parlia- 
ment ! He has no other ground of triumph l)ut the disgrace and 
disiionor of his country ; however, her case is better than he has 
stated it; and that is proved by the experiment; for in 1779, Me 
were encountered by the same threats on the same subject ; we 
despised those threats ; we put the question to a trial ; we entered 
into a non-consumption agreement ; we demanded a free trade ; the 
free trade we obtained ; the linen trade we preserved. 

What we cannot reconcile to your interests, he affects to recon- 
cile to your honor. He, the minister, "his budget with corruption 
crammed," proposes to you to give up the ancient inheritance of 
your country ; to proclaim an utter and blank incapacity, and to 
register this prpclamation of incapacity in an act which inflicts on 
this ancient nation an eternal disability : and he accompanies these 
monstrous proposals by undisguised terror and unqualified bribery, 
and this he calls no attack on the honor and dignity of the 
kingdom. 

The thing he proposes to buy, is what cannot be sold — lib- 
erty ! For it, he has nothing to give ; evci-ytliing of value which 
you possess, you obtained under a free constitution ; part with it, 
and you must be not only a slave but an idiot. 

His propositions not only go to your dishontir, but they arc built 
upon nothing else : he tells you, it is his main argument, (hat you 
are unfit to exercise a free constitution : and ho affects to prove it 
by the experiment. Jacobinism grows, says he, out of the very 
state and condition of Ireland. I have heard of parliament im- 
peaching ministers; but hero is a minister impeaching parliament ; 
he does more — he impeaches the parliamentary constitution itself: 
the abuses in that constitution he has protected ; it is only its being 
that he destroys; on what ground? Your exports since your 
emancipation, and under that parliamentary constitution, and in 
a great lucasure by that parliamentary constitution, have nearly 
doubled ; connnercially it has worked well. Your concord with 
England since the emancipation, as far as it relates to parliament 
oa the subject of war, has been not only approved, but has been 



HENRY GRATTAN. rc)~ 

productive ; imperially, therefore, it has worked well. What then 
does the minister in tact object to? That you have supported him ; 
that you have concurred in his system ; therefore he proposes to the 
people to abolish the parliament, and to continue the minister. He 
does more — he proposes to you to substitute the British Parliament 
in your place, to destroy the body that i-estored your liberties, and 
to restore that body which destroyed them. Against such a prop- 
osition, were I exp'iring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last 
breath, and record my dying testimony. 

May 26th, 1800. 

Mr. Grattan observed that the bill before the House was full of 
inaccuracies, but inaccuracy was the least of the objections ; it did 
indeed refer to a schedule for duties which were not there set forth, 
and which were not yet passed ; it did indeed recite a bill to have 
passed both Houses of Parliament which was at that very moment in 
debate before tlie Houseof Lords ; and it did describe that very bill 
by the name of an act of Parliament (saying that when the act, 
namely, a bill which had only passed one house, had the royal assent, 
should pass), offending against parliamentary propriety and legal 
phraseology with its various and great improprieties, the evident 
marks of haste and carelessness. But all these are lost in the fatal 
principle of ruin and extinction which the bill contains, whose enact- 
ing clauses are two ; first that there shall be a distinct and separate 
council, and secondly, that there shall not be a pai'liament. 

That is to say, that you are to have not what is miscalled a Union, 
still less a union and a constitution of liberty, but a subordinate 
Irish government without the control of an Irish parliament ; the 
inferiority, the expense, the patronage, of a second and secondary 
government, with all those distinctions which attend separate estab- 
lishments of finance and I'evenue, with a separate system of trade, 
M"ith a different interest for money, and a distinct code of law. This 
breach of compact, for such I must call it — this surrender of liberty, 
for it is nothing less— this transfer of the powers of the country to 
Great Britain — (what powers have ycju over India? precisely as 
much as you retain over Ireland) — this introduction of an innovation 
consisting of a separate Irish government without an Irish parlia- 



596 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ment, is made at a time of national debility and division, the result 
of a rank and vicious system of government, formed to corrupt the 
upper order and divide and inflame the louver, and to deprive both 
of their liberty ; such as one part of the present British cabinet ab- 
jured, and declaring that the}' took oiEcc principally to reform, did 
grcatlj' confirm and aggravate ; at a time too of martial law, admitted 
under the plea of necessity, but with great effect to depress and in- 
timidate, not rebellion but assertion; not the spirit of insurrec- 
tion, but the si)irit of constitution, which would have also spoken 
more decidedly (and yet very decidedly it has spoken notwith- 
standing). 

At a time, I say, when government was possessed of dictatorial 
power, and at a time when a spirit of innovation was abroad, M-hich 
has been adopted by the ministers of the Crown, who thus aflbrd 
their example to overturn the throne by overturning the constitution, 
and teach the Jacobin, if he wanted to be taught, to make war on 
the rights of kings by making a Jacobinical war on the rights of the 
people ; the power given them to preserve the settled state of order, 
they use to introduce a new order of things, and make government 
a question of strength, not of opinion; they run the chance of future 
anarchy in order to establish present despotism ; they go into the 
very excesses they condemn, and arc the bad example they depre- 
cate ; they tell the people practically and eflcctuall}' that there is a 
faction not less daring and destructive than the rankest democracy ; 
a faction which, under the color of supporting government, would 
eradicate the great fundamental and ancient principles of public se- 
curity, as cfi'cctually, as ambitiously, and as sediiiously as its rival 
the Jacobin, who is only guilty of an opposite excess, and Avho is 
likely to follow and march through the public breach which the slaves 
of despotism have made in the fundamental laws of the land for the 
entrance of the two extremes in succession, Tyraimy that takes the 
lead, and Anarchy that follows. 

If the principle of this bill be innovation, the terms of it are 
innovation likewise; the alteration in our system of cnmmcrco is 
innovation ; the alteration in our system of revenue is innovation. 
The bill teems with everything that is exceptionable. They talk 
to you, indeed, as if liberty surrendered you were to break down 
under the weight of commercial acquisition ; they talk to you, indeed, 



HENRY GRATTAN. 597 

as if for liberty surrendered you were to carry off an immense por- 
tion of English revenue ; and one million a year in war, paid by 
England in all distresses, was to glad and console you, and much 
silly and empty sound of that kind was rung in your ears. But what 
is the act ? that the terms of the Union arc aggravations of the Union ; 
the principal conditions are heavy contributions. Your financial 
conditions arc dangerous experiments, and both such as you are 
perfectly competent to make, provided yon arc disposed to do so 
much mischief to yoxiv country. The revenue, or the financial 
returns set out, with the surrender of an availing revenue of £100,000 
a j'car, arising from the export of the raw material and the import of 
the manufacture, that to the best possible revenue which a nation 
can continue, it adds the creation of a deficit of £95,000 a year, the 
interest to pay a loan of one million and a half to be paid for the 
purchase of lioroughs ; that is, from one to two hundred thousand 
pounds a year, to be supplied l)y new taxes. The terms go on and 
propose a proportion of two to fifteen as the future contribution of Ire- 
land ; they do this Vv-itliout any data Avhatsoever which can warrant 
such a proposition. The data which are now before you, but which 
were not before _you when you passed the resolution, and when tiiat 
proposition was laid, are unintelligible to the gentlemen to whom 
those data are fiu-nished. Their papers, for instance, state the value of 
the consumption of the country in certain articles, by which they 
afl'cct to ascertain its opulence, to be so much ; and other papers, 
which are also before the IIousc, state tlie value to be so much less. 
In the instance of tea, of tobacco, and some other articles, the value 
of the goods consumed is returned by one-third, in some cases by 
oric-half, more than the value of the same kind of goods imported. 
The diflcrence may be rcconcilcable, but it is not reconciled, and the 
House votes now tiic proportion of the contribution which is founded 
on thdsc very papers, withf)ut waiting for, without demanding ex- 
planation. Suppose the cause, partly at least, of the apparent in- 
congruity is that in one set of papers they are valued subject to 
freight and tax, and in another set exempt from both. When the 
minister proceeds to value the ability of the country to pay taxes, he 
presents you with papers containing the value of the great articles, 
with tile charge of freight and taxes embodied ; but when he pro- 
ceeds to state the balance of trade between England and Ireland, he 



598 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

presents papers in which the freight and t;'.x arc omitted ; thus coals 
(it is one among other instances) are valned at the pit mouth, and 
thus an apparent balance of trade is created in j'our favor, about 
£800,000 more than the fact; so that by the double operation you 
arc overrated in commerce and overrated in revenue. I say, there- 
fore, that in iixing the proportion of relative contribution, as far as 
that pi'oportion affected to found itself on the comparative consump- 
tion of the respective kingdoms, jou had vo data. 'When first 
you voted that proportion by way of resolution, you had not even 
papers ; the niajority of this House took the word of the minister, 
without papers or documents, and on that word voted a twenty 
years' contribution. Since you proceeded by way of bill, a member 
on this side of the House called for papers ; the papers are returned 
incongruous and unexplained, and now you vote the data which you 
do not understand, as before you voted without any data whatever. 
I speak of the comparison on the articles of consumption ; let us see 
whether you have better information on the comparison formed on 
the impoi'ts and exports. Here papers are submitted, but here the 
inland trade is omitted ; it is calculated to amount in Britain to 
£12,000,000 per annum ; here also the re-export trade is omitted. 
It is valued at £11,000,000 per annum in Britain; in Ireland 
£133,000,000 ; in the year ending January, 1799, it is valued at 
£14,000,000 in Britain. In the minister's calculation of national 
wealth, to ground a tax on national income, it was included, I ap- 
prehend, as a distinct substantive source of wealth ; and if it wero 
just to comprehend it with a view to impose a tax, it is equally just 
to comprehend it with a view to ascertain a proportion ; it is carried 
on by a distinct capital ; it produces a distinct revenue ; it is by itself 
a great trade ; and it is almost the only ono of some great commer- 
cial nations — Holland for instance. It is a greater evidence and 
greater source of wealth to make other nations pay for your industry 
added to that of other countries, than out of the fruits of your in- 
dustry to pay for the industry of those countries. 

But without inquiring farther into this head, without inquiring 
whether it be just to proceed on an average of three years, when it 
appears from a document, almost published under the name of Sir. 
Rose, that the imports and exports of Britain, in the year 1798, 
were not £73,000,000 but £80,000,000, and the re-export not 



HENRY GRATTAN. 599 

£11,000,000, but £14,000,000; while our trade is said to have 
-declined, inasmuch as our revenue is said to have fallen £800,000 ; 
without inquiring into t.liis, I say, that the papers before you prove 
your contribution to be unjust ; they set forth the imports and ex- 
ports of Britain, for the three years, to have bceu £73,000,000 ; on 
that they form the proportion of two to fifteen ; now there should be 
added to that £73,000,000, £G, 000,000 per annum, which Britain 
receives from the Indies and from Ireland ; £4,000,000 from the 
former, and £800,000 interest for public money lent ; and near 
£2,000,000 in rent from the latter ; this £2,000,000 is to be taken 
from the imports and exports of Ireland, and to be added to those 
of Britain, which will make a propoi'tion not of ten to seventy- 
three, but of about eight to seventy-nine. Thus it follows, that 
Avhatcvor difficulty you may have in pronouncing the proportion of 
contribulion, 3-ou can have no difficulty in pronouncing that the con- 
tribution you have ascertained is unjust and fallacious ; and 3'ou can 
discover its injustice and fallacy by the very papers on which you 
have formed it ; those papers ascertaining the proportion you have 
voted, by the omission of £0,000,000 of British annual income. 
Thus has this House, under the direction of the minister, over- 
charged this country in contribution, having no sufficient evidence 
to estimate its contribution, but having complete evidence to im- 
peach that contribution which it now imposes. And what is this 
contribution? It is valued at about £4,800,000 in war, in addition 
to the interest of your debt, which is about £140,000 per annum; 
that is, equal to the charge of your establishment, four times greater 
than any past war establishment ; a charge equal to the support of 
128,000 soldiers, which is near eight times as much as you paid in 
former wars : so that you are to multiply your charge for the loss of 
jour parliament ; or rather, you arc to pay the tribute of the slave ; 
before this, you raised the supply of freemen; — a charge, I say, 
which, if for troops to be kept in the country, establishes a military 
government as complete as in Russia; and wdiich, if for troops out 
of the country, will not leave you a guinea ; which will, therefore, 
render you a slave or a bankrupt ; a military province of England, 
or a beggar — indeed both : for though I do not think the means of 
this country are unequal to every necessary expense, j'et I do think 
they are inadequate to that contributary expense which the Union 



(500 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

stipuiiifcs. I do think they are unequal to a war conti-il)ution of 
£4,800,000 per annum ; and I think the Jittenipt will exhaust this 
countiy, at the same time that it enslaves her. Color it as you 
please, she will pay more than she is able ; and she will pay for a 
force, not to protect, but to eiishnc. 

Do we know that the balance of our trade ^vith all the world is 
but half a niilliiiu in our favor, and that this half million is to supply 
the absentee drain of above two millions, which is to be greatly 
increased by the oiteratiun of the Union, l)y which we are to pay 
nut only absentee representation, but absentee establishment? Do 
wc know that even now, when we borrow about £8,000,000 per 
annum from England, the exchange is greatly against us? Do wo 
know, that at this very moment, the revenue has fallen £800,000? 

— a fall which could only be occasional, if your constitution wero 
suffered to continue ; but, if the Union and its new drain, contribu- 
tions, discontents, military government, and military luaxims shall 
succeed, is ominous and alarming. Knowing all these, what have 
we done? We have overrated our country in wealth, to overrate- 
her in contribution, to apply that contribution to the maintenance of 
a military, to take away her liberty. I speak of the jjroposed war 
establishment. What is the proposed peace establishment? — one- 
third greater than past peace establishments. Why one-third 
greater? The increased pay of 15,000 men, the peace establishment 
of a militia of 17,000 men, the skelctcm of the yeoman corps, will 
not account for an increase of one-third, namely, of half a million. 
No ground whatever has been laid for it, except, indeed, a certain, 
hint that it may be expedient to mention. In piMiee, an army iu 
Ireland of 20,000 — we understand that perfectly —an Union army 

— a military establishment in peace; and a rebellion establishment 
in war : in fact, an army not for the people of Ireland, but put upon 
them, not to protect them, but to protect the i)rojccts of the minister 
against them. 'Tis true, it has been said, that England will pay 
this additional expense; but what is that? The English minister 
will make his country assist in the subjugation of the Irish by force 
of arms; there is no great compliment in this: l)ut rely on it, that 
Ireland, like every enslaved country, Avill ultimately be compelled 
to pay for her own subjugation ; robbery and taxes ever follow con- 
quest ; the country that loses her liberty, loses her revenues. 



HENEY GRATTAN. 601 

Iiut, if the terms of the financial part of the Union were as liene- 
ficial as they are injurious, it would be of little moment; for there 
is an article, that whenever the minister shall raise the debt of 
Ireland to an amount which shall be as the jn-oportion of two to 
fifteen in relation to the permanent debt of England (in three j'cars 
of war they tell you they will do it), then you arc to be taxed as 
much as England. Considering then the terms of the Union, as far 
as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of the 
double establishment, an increase of the separate establishments, 
and a military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to 
the full taxes of England. 

As to conmierce, the terms are short .and simiilc — to ab.ate those 
duties which you thought necessary for the protection of yonr manu- 
factures ; that's all ! Are ihc manufacturers of glass, of iron-ware, 
are the brewers, the hosiers, the saddlers, the manufacturers of 
cotton, obliged to you for that? Did they petition parliament for 
it? have they not petitioned parliament against it? Who is it then 
that calls for it? The Irish manufacturer? — No. The Irish con- 
sumer? — No. The Irish Parliament? — No. Who then? — The 
British minister, who does not indeed petition, but exacts it of the 
Irish Parliament, who, at the same time, are called on to surrender 
themselves, their power, .and their being. All duties below ten per 
cent, to be taken off; all duties above it to be reduced to that stand- 
ard for twenty years, and theu to be abolished in lolo. Calico is 
respited for a few years. Why do you deprive calico of the advan- 
tage of being unprotected for those few years? Why; but because 
it is of no advantage, but the contrary ; and you have thought it 
a matter of mercy to let the persons engaged in that trade gradually 
withdraw. Here is the commercial benelit, the commerce which wo 
are to get fin* our constitution ; fen- 3H)u do not say, that it is a 
material privilege to be permitted to export to England onv cotton 
and woollen cloth. Would it be a great privilege to permit England 
to export Burgundy into France? Even the privilege of importing 
wool, the British minister has told J'ou, will be of no use to you; 
he is, I believe right ; there is nothing he gives, there is nothing in 
trade which he can give, that will be of any use to you. I do not 
pretend to decide whether these advantages will prove the ruin of 
3'our manufacturers ; but I do venture to decide, that they will not 



€02 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

he of any use to them. Besides, what arc the commercial terms? 
Such as you conlcl give yourselves without an Union, if you did not 
think them mischievous; what, then, are tiie terms, financial and 
commercial? The increase of j'our taxes of incumbrance, and the 
jibatcment of your duties of protection ; a surrender, not a compen- 
sation ; evidences of conquest ; such terms as a nation must expect 
that surrenders her constitution. 

From the bad terms which attend the Union, I am naturally led 
to the foul means by which it has been obtained — dismissals from 
office — perversions of the place bill — sale of peerage — purchase 
of I)oroughs — appointment of sheriffs with a view to prevent the 
meetings of freemen and freeholders for the purpose of expressing 
their opinions on the subject of a Legislative Union — in short, the 
most avowed corruption, threats, and stratagems, accompanied by 
martial hiw, to deprive a nation of her liberty ; and so vciy great 
and beneficial have been the efforts, that His Majesty's ministers 
have actually resorted to a partial dissolution </f parliament at the 
very time they declined to resort to a general election ; the sense of 
parliament and people was against them ; they change, therefore, 
the parliament without recurring to the peoi)le, but procure a 
number of I'cturns, exceeding their present majority, from private 
boroughs, vacated with a view to return a court member, who should 
succeed a gentleman that would not vote for the Union ; here, then, 
is a parliament made b}^ the minister, not the jjcople ; and made for 
the question. Under these circumstances, in opposition to the 
declared sense of the country, has been passed a measure imposing 
on the people a new coiistitutii>n, and subverting the old one. 

Tiie good consequences of this measure iiave been boldly prophe- 
sied ; I own I see them not. Tranquillity arising from the suppres- 
sion of parliament ; manufacturers flourishing from the want of 
protection, these excellent cousecjuences are, at best, but problemat- 
ical ; the ceasing of political topics with the ceasing of the assembly 
wherein they might be regularly or decorously deliberated, is v.n 
expectation very pious, jjcrhaps, but very fond and very presump- 
tuous. Do you seriously think that when 3'ou take away the forms 
of liberty, you take away tlic spirit of libert}'? Do you tliink, fur 
instance, that the Catholic will become insensible to the privileges of 
a free constitution, because a Protestant Parliament has renounced 



HENRY GRATTAN. (503 

them? Do jou think Protestant and Catholic will become insensible 
to the necessity of representation, because they lost their freedom by 
the want of it? Do you think that a minister, that any set of men 
in league with a minister, can, with the institution, sink, smother, 
and put out the very essence, soul, and light of libertj'? It may bo 
so; I do not believe it. Eecollect again, that this tranquillity and 
tliis commerce predicted to follow the Union, are, at best, paradoxi- 
cal and remote ; but that the evil consequences predicted are imme- 
diate and certain, namely, the war contribution of near £5,000,000, 
the diminution of your landed capital, the absence of your landed 
proprietors, the abatement of your protecting duties, the surrender 
of a solid revenue, the increase of ^-our benelit by a borough loan, 
and the subversion of your constitution. Those gentlemen who, 
for what they call tranquillity, in their speculations, are ready to 
sacrifice the labors, the honor, and the freedom of their country, 
may find that they have lost the liberty, but have not secured the 
repose. Let me add, that the most decided friends, who deserve 
respect, have not gone farther than to say, that its consequences 
cannot be foreseen. 

The minister of Britain (Mr. Pitt) has spoken again in its favor. 
His iirst speech is a record of inanity ; the merit of his second is, to 
liave abandoned the defence of the first. The inundation of capital 
from the increase of absentees, the visit of Fnitish manufacturers 
from the increase of taxes, the abatement of i)rotccting duties, and 
the diminution of the number of consumers, civilization arising from 
the absence of the gentry, from the corruption of ihe higher orders 
(never was minister more profligate), from the debasement of the 
lower order by the application of terror, civilization arising from the 
regular pi'actices of administration to destroy public virtue, and to 
render the evils base and false of every order and degree. The 
political blessings arising from these causes, which overflowed in the 
first speech, have, in the minister's sccdiid speech, prudentlj^ and 
considerately, like any other folly of the day, vanished and evapo- 
rated. Argument seems to have taken a new post; it is no longer 
industry of the manufacturer, it is now a more pleasurable plan ; 
luxury and consumer ; such has been the turn of talk and trifling here. 
"England will furnish everytiiing for money; she will take your 
rent, and suj)piy manufactures for your acconnnodation ; what signi- 



(JOi TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

fics wliicli country supplies the article, since yon are one people?" 
In the same way it is said : " What signifies the number of Irish rep- 
resentatives, since yon are one people? and, therefore, let them be- 
so fcAV as to bo merged in the representation of Great Britain." 
Again, it is said: "What signifies where the army is quartered, 
wiiethcr in ISritain or in Ireland, since you are one people?" and, 
therefore, let the troops be in Ireland, and the manufactures he in 
Great Britain ! 

Tlie advantages predicted in revenue, like those in commerce, 
vanish also ; the magnificent million of the speech of the Irish Secre- 
tary, docs not appear in the second oration of the British minister. 
He had indeed assumed a certain air of astonishment at the surmise,^ 
that Ih'ilain sought to obtain revenue from other countries. He suf- 
fered his minister hei-e to go a little farther, and to teach us to think 
that Englimd was impatient to get rid of revenue ; that her turn now 
was to buy up constitutions; that she had l)ecome a chapn)an and 
dealer in liberty, and was willing to pay Ireland for her parliament, 
half a million in peace, and one million per annum in ^vav. I 
doubted the fact, for I had not forgotten the American war ; I had 
not forgotteu the American Stamp Act; I had not forgotten Mr. G. 
Greiiviiic's pamplilet, containing a proposal to tax Ireland as well as 
America; I had not forgotten the proposal of the present minister ot 
England, contained in one of the propositions of 1785, namely, that 
the surplus of the hereditary I'evenue should go to England. When, 
therefore, the same minister, in a state of tenfold distress, disclaimed 
revenue, and when the minister here averred that England was ta 
pay a contribution to Ireland, I did not believe either; but when the 
former now disavows the latter, and, in his second speech as printed, 
he is made to say, that Ireland is to pay pretty much what she does 
now ; that is to say, not as the minister here said, a million less, but 
above fcmr times as much as she paid in any former war, and many 
times as much as she is able, and such an expense as the rebellion, 
not the war, produced ; I say, when the minister sets forth such as 
our contribution hereafter, he does renounce all benefits predicted in 
finance, with as much candor as he abandons all benefits predicted in 
commerce, to result from his fatal measure of Union. His second 
speech, in short, deserts the boast of beneficial terms, and coiitincs 
itself to errors and misrepresentations of another kind, which are 



HENRY GRATTAN. (305 

there to bo found in very great abundance. Ho sets forth that the 
Irish constitution is the cause of our misfortunes.; his friends have 
stated the same thing, and have said, that they cannot administer the 
country on her revenues or under her constitution ; and suih an 
argument in him and in them is modestly urged to banish the parlia- 
ment.and to retain the ministry. Never was it known in a country 
that i-etaincd a trace of liberty, that a minister of the Crown Mas 
suflered to impeach the constitution of the reahn. Suppose ho were 
to say : — 

"I cannot administer a monarchical constitution ; therefore l)anisli 
the king;" or, "I cannot administer an aristocratic constitution; 
therefore banish the house of Lords." What, in fact, docs the min- 
ister say, Avho uses tliis argimieut, but that his system M"as a griev- 
ance, as was predicted by part of his colleagues, wlio said they toolc 
office to reform it ; that it was not fit for a free people ; that it would 
produce a civil war; that the public sale of honors, that his noiori- 
ous attempts to pack parliament, that the violence of some of iiis 
agents in this country, that his selection of pers(nis for Irish affairs, 
who were nither panders than politicians, would aid the growth ot 
French principles, and produce insurgency? Let us, however, c'ivc 
the minister every advantage ; let us receive his charge, and try the 
constitution. He will please to show by what act she produced tlic 
rebellion; the mere co-existence of a constitution and a rel)t'llion 
docs not convict the former; it Avill be necessary for the accuser to 
specify facts, and it will be necessary for him to show, tirst, tliat 
these facts sprung out of parliament ; second, that these facts pro- 
duced the rel)clli()n. His friends have advanced two facts, the 
reform of parliament, and the emancipation of the Catholics ; but it 
will be recollected, that parliament was not tlic autlior of cither of 
these questions, and it will be recollected also, that in the report of 
the two Houses, formed by the friends of the minis! er, it is declared, 
that neither of these questions was the cause of the rebellion, for 
there it is said, that neither of these questions was an oi)jcct to the 
people. Thus is the constitution acquitted, and acquitted by the 
very ministry who prefer the charge. They have conliiicd their 
charge to tw"o questions; and tluy have declared these (juestions 
did nut interest the people; and these questions, it is known, did 
not spring from the parliament. 



606 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

They have affected to try the constitution. Let us now try them ; 
and I ask whether their own measures might not have caused the 
rebellion? AV'hether the sale of peerages, as notoriously took place 
in 1789 and 1790, by the then ministers of the crown, for the pur- 
pose of procuring seats in the commons for tbe dependents of the 
Castle, might not have destroyed in Ireland the credit of J3ritish 
government? 

I ask, whether the attempt to pack the Irish Parliament, as was 
notoriously practised in 1789 and 1790, by the then minister of the 
crown in Ireland, might not have sunk the credit of British govern- 
ment? I ask, whether the profligate avowal of that profligate prac- 
tice by a profligate minister of the crown, might not have sunk the 
credit of British government? I ask not, whether the introduction 
of the question of Parliamentary Reform could have sunk the credit 
of British government ; but I do ask, whether the introduction and 
the apostacy from that question, might not have helped to sink the 
credit of British government? I ask, whether the introduction of 
the Catholic question in Great Britain in 1792 ; whether the opjiosi- 
tion given to the Catholic franchise by the Irish government in 
1792 ; whether the assent given to the petition for that franchise by 
the English ministry in 1793 ; whether the abuse and Billingsgate 
accompanying that assent, and uttered by the Irish ministry at that 
time ; whether the adoption of the pretensions of the Catholics by 
the English ministry at the close of 1794 ; whether the rejection of 
those pretensions, and the recall of a lord-lioutennnt, because with 
the ministry's knowledge and acquiescence he honored those preten- 
sions ; whether the selection of persons for distinguished trust, who 
had distinguished themselves by a perpetual abuse of the Iiish, and 
who were notoriously hostile, and who since have acknowledged 
their hostility by a conspiracy against the parliamentarj' constitution 
of their country ; I ask, I say, Avhether such a conduct, so incoher- 
ent, so irritating, so violent, so temporizing, so corrupt, might not 
Lave very much aided the efforts of France in sinking the character 
of British government? I ask those questions, and I do say, if ever 
the causes of the late rebellion shall be dispassionately discussed, the 
great, originating, and fundamental cause, will be found in the aver- 
sion of His Miijesty's ministry to the independency of the Irish Par- 
liament, and their efforts to subvert the same. 



HENRY GRATTAN. (J07 

We follow the minister. In defence of his plan of Union, he tells 
us the number of Irish representatives in the British Parliament is of 
little consequence. This <loctriue is new, namely, that between two 
nations the comparative influence is of no moment. According to 
this, it would be of no moment what should be the number of tho 
British Parliament. No, says the minister ; the alteration is to bo 
limited to the Irish Parliament ; the number and fabric of the British 
is to remain entire, unaltered, and unalterable. Wliat now becomes 
of the argument of mutual and rccipi'ocal change? or what does the 
new argument avow, but what we maintained and the court denied, 
that tlie Union was, with respect to Ii'clnnd, a mergerof her parliament 
in the legislature of the other, without creating any materitd alteration 
therein, save as far as it advanced thd influence of the crown, dii'ect 
or indirect. 

The minister goes on, and supposes one hundred Irish will be suffi- 
cient, because he supposes any number would be sufficient ; and he 
supposes any number Avould be sufficient, because the nations are 
idcnlifled. Thus he speaks, as if identification was at once a cause 
to flow from representation, and an event whiqh peceded it. You 
arc one people, such is his argument, because you are represented, 
and what signifies how, or, indeed, whether you be represented? 
But the fact is, that you are identified (if you be identified, which I 
den}) in the single point of representation, and that representation 
is absorbed in the superior numbers of the English Parliament, and 
that apparent identification is, of coui'se, lost, while you remain a 
distinct country, distinct in interest, revenue, law, finance, com- 
merce, government. Suppose Yorkshire governed by a lord-lieu- 
tenant and by a diflerent code of law, she would not be a part of 
England, but a province of Great Britain ; 1)ut now the martial law 
of Scotland must be the martial law of Englajid ; and therefore the 
constitutional sympathy of England defends and renders the number 
of her representatives less essential ; but the martial law of -Ireland 
is not the martial law of England ; the military government of Ire- 
land is not the military government of England, and therefore the 
constitutional sympathy of England docs not defend Ireland, but, 
on the contrar}', the imperial jealousy of England endangers Ireland, 
and has taught the councils of Britain to think that our servitude is 
our safety. 



COS TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

"It is matter of no moment what arc the nnml)cr of Irish repre- 
sentatives, provided that they be sufEcient to state the wants, and 
watch over the interest of their country." So do the public prints 
make the minister speak. Why! three men are sufEcient for that 
purpose — one man could do it — a irentleman seated at the bar could 
do it ; the American agents did that l>ef(>re the American war. But 
the minister is made to add another provision, which makes his doc- 
ti'inc less answerable in point of meaning, leaving it without anj- 
meaning at all — "provided that the numbers be sufEcient to protect 
the rights of the country." But, indeed, Mhen he afterwards ex- 
plains what protection those rights ai-e to receive, then he sets j'our 
mind at case — pi'otectiou against Jacobinism ; that's the only point, 
and that could bo accomplished without a single representative — 
without a parliament ; an absolute monarch could do that ; martial 
law will do that ; James the Second would have done it. But are 
there no popular rights ? Is liberty gone out of the calendar ? Order, 
government, they are indispensable, but are they the whole? This 
is new doctrine in these coiuitries, very familiar to a minister, but 
very fatal to a free people. He confines the purposes of Irish repre-- 
sentation to two objects ; first, watching and stating, which only re- 
quires one representative ; secondly, protection against Jacobinism, 
which requires no representative whatever. He then proceeds to 
ask himself a question extremely natural after such reasoning; what 
security has Ireland? He answers, with great candor, honor. Eng- 
lish honor. Now, when the liberty and security of one country 
depend on the honor of another, the latter may have much honor, 
but the former can have no liberty. To depend on the honor of 
another country, is to depend on (he will ; and to depend on the Avill 
of another country, is the definition of slavery. "Depend on my 
honor," said Charles the First, when he trifled about the petition of 
right : " I will trust the people with the custody of their own liberty, 
but I will trust no people with the custody of any liberty other than 
their own, whether that people be Eome, Athens, or Britain." 

Observe how the minister speaks of that countiy which is to de- 
pend hereafter on British honor, which, in his present power, is, in 
fact, his honor. " We had to contend with the leaders of the Prot- 
estants, 'enemies to government;' the violent and inflamed spirit of 
the Catholics ; the disappointed ambition of those who would ruin 



, HENRY GRATTAN. GO!) 

the country becauye they could not ho the rulers of it." Behold the 
character he gives of tlie enemies of the Union, namely, of twentj^- 
onc counties convened at public meetings by due notice ; of several 
other counties tiiat have petitioned ; of most of the great cities and 
towns, or indeed of almost all the Irish, save a very few mistaken 
men, and that body whom government could influence. Thus the 
minister utters a national proscription at the moment of his projected 
Union : he excludes by personal abuse from the possibility of iden- 
tification, all the enemies of the Union, all the friends of the parlia- 
mentary constitution of 1782, that great body of the Irish, he abuses 
them with a petulance more befitting one of his Irish ministers, than 
an exalted character, and infinitely more disgraceful to himself than 
to them ; one would think one of his Irish railers had lent him their 
vulgar clarion to bray at the people. 

This union of parliaments, this proscription of people, he follows 
by a declaration wherein he misrepresents their sentiments as he had 
before traduced their reputation. After a calm and mature conside- 
ration, the people have pronounced their judgment in favor of an 
Union ; of which assertion not one single syllabic has any existence 
in fact, or in the appearance of fact, and I appeal to the petitions of 
twenty-one counties publicly convened, and to the other petitions of 
other counties numerously signed, and to those of the great towns and 
cities. To affirm that the judgment of a nation is erroneous may 
mortify, but to affirm that her judgment against is for; to assert that 
she has said aye when she has pronounced no; to affect to refer a 
great question to the people ; finding the sense of the people, like 
that of the parliament, against the question, to force the question ; 
to affirm the sense of the people to be for the question ; to affirm 
that the question is persisted in because the sense of the people is for 
it ; to make the falsification of her sentiments the foundation of her 
rnin and the ground of the Union ; to affirm that her parliament, 
constitution, liberty, honor, j'l'operty, are taken away by her own 
authority; there is, in such artifice, an effrontery, a hardihood, an 
insensibility, that can best be answered by sensations of astonishment 
and disgust, excited on this occasion by the British minister, whether 
he speaks in gross and total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless 
and supreme contempt for it. 

The constitution may be for a time so lost ; the character of the 



610 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

country cannot be lost. The ministers of the crown will, or may 
perhaps at length find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an 
ancient and respectable nation, by abilities, however great, and by 
power and by corruption, however irresistible ; liberty may repair her 
golden beams, and with redoubled heat animate the country ; the cry 
of loyalty will not long continue against the principles of liberty ; 
loyalty is a noble, a judicious, and a capacious principle ; but in 
these countries loyalty, distinct from liberty, is corruption, not 
loyalty. 

The cry of the connection will not, in the end, avail against the 
principles of liberty. Connection is a wise and a profound policy ; 
but connection witliout an Irish Parliament, is connection without its 
own principle, without analogy of condition, without the pride of 
honor that should attend it; is innovation, is peril, is subjugation — 
not connection. 

The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the 
principles of liberty. 

Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the 
preservation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but, without 
union of hearts — with a separate government, and without a sepa- 
rate parliament, identification is extinction, is dishonor, is conquest 
— not identification. 

Yet I do not give up the country : I see her in a swoon, but she 
is not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, 
still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of 
beauty — 

" Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet 
Is ci'imson iu thy lips and in thy cheelis, 
And death's pale flag is not advanced there." 

While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. 
Let the courtier present bis flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of 
his faith with every new breath of wind : I will remain anchored 
here with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her 
freedom, faithful to her fall. 



HENRY GRATTAN. 611 



Invective Against Corry, 



February 14th, 1800. 

|AS the gentleman done ? Has he completely done ? He was 
WM unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. 
*7f There was scarce a word he uttered that was not a violation 
J. of the privileges of tlie House ; but I did not call him to 
order — why? because the limited talents of some men render it 
impossible for them to be severe without being unparliamentarj'. 
But before I sit down I shall show him how to be severe and parlia- 
mentary at the same time. On any other occasion I should think 
myself justifiable in treating with silent contempt auything which 
miglit fall from that honorable member ; but there are times when 
the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accu- 
sation. I know the difficulty the honorable gentleman labored 
under when he attacked me, conscious that, on a comparative view 
of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say 
which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge. 
I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were made by an honest 
man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. 
But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man. 

The right honorable gentleman has called me " an unimpeachcd 
traitor." I ask, why not "traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I 
will tell him ; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a cow- 
ard, who raises his aim to strike, but has not courage to give the 
blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamen- 
tary, and he is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because 
he happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I say he is one 
who has abused the privilege of parliament and freedom of debate to 
the uttering language, which, if spoken out of the House, I should 



612 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

answer only witli a blow. I care not how high his situation, how 
low his characler, how contemptible his speech ; whether a privy 
counsellor or a parasite, my answer Avould be a blow. He has 
charged me with being connected with the rebels : the charge is 
utterly, totally, and meanly false. Does the honorable gentleman 
rely on the report of the House of Lords for the foundation of his 
assertion ? If he docs, I can prove to the committee there was a 
physical impossibility of that repoi't being true. But I scorn to 
answer any man for my conduct, whether he be a political coxcomb, 
or whether he brought himself into power by a false glare of courage 
or not. I scorn to answer any wizard of the Castle throwing himself 
into fantastical airs. But 'if an honorable and independent man 
were to make a charge against me, I would say : " You charge me 
with having an intercourse with the rebels, and you found your 
charge upon what is said to have appeared before a committee of the 
Lords. Sir, the report of that committee is totally and cgregiously 
irregular." I will read a letter from Mr. Nelson, who had been 
examined l)efore that committee ; it states that what the report 
represents him as having spoken, is notiohat he said. [Mr. Grattan 
here i-eada letter from Mr. Nelson, denying that he had any connec- 
tion with Mr. Grattan as charged in the report ; and concluding 
by sa3'ing, " never was misrejiresenlatlon more vile (han that ^jm< into 
my moulli by the rejiort."'] 

From the situation that I held, and from the connections I had in 
the city of Dublin, it was necessary for me to hold intercourse with 
various descriptions of persons. The right honorable member might 
as well have been charged with a participation in the guilt of those 
traitors ; for he had communicated with some of those very jiersons 
on the subject of parliamentary reform. The Irish government, 
too, were in communication with some of them. 

The riglit honorable member has told me I desei'ted a profession 
where wealth and station wei'e the reward of industry and talent. If 
I mistake not, that gentleman endeavored to obtain those rewards 
by the same means ; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barris- 
ter for those of a parasite and pander. He fled from the labor of 
study to flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlor 
a better sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts ; 
the house of a great man a more convenient way to jiower and to 



HENRY GRATTAN. G13 

place ; and that it was easier for a statesman of middling talents to 
sell his friends, than for a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients. 

For mj'self, whatever corporate or other bodies have said or done 
to me, 1 from the bottom of my heart forgive them. I feel I have 
done too much for my country to be vexed at them. I would rather 
that they should not feel or acknowledge what I have clone for them, 
and call me traitor, than have i-eason to say I sold them. I will 
always defend myself against the assassin ; but with large bodies it 
is different. To the people I will bow : they may be my enemy — 
I never shall be theirs. 

At the emancipation of Ireland, in 1782, I took a leading part in 
the foundation of that constitution which is now endeavored to be 
destroyed. Of that constitution I was the author ; in that constitu- 
tion I glory ; and for it the honorable gentleman should bestow 
praise, not invent calumny. Notwithstanding my weak state of 
body, I come to give my last testimony against this Union, so fatal 
to the liberties and interests of my country. I come to make com- 
mon cause with these honorable and virtuous gentlemen around me ; 
to try and save the constitution ; or if not to save the constitution, 
at least to save our characters, and remove from our graves the foul 
disgrace of standing apart while a deadly blow is aimed at the inde- 
pendence of our country. 

The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country after 
exciting reljellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No 
such thing. Tlie charge is false. The civil war had not commenced 
when I left the kingdom ; and I could not have returned without 
taking a part. On the one side there was the camp of the rebel ; 
on the other, the camp of the minister, a greater traitor than that 
rebel. The stronghold of the constitution was nowhere to be found. 
I agree that the reljel who rises against the government should have 
suffered ; but I missed on the scaffold the right honorable gentleman. 
Two desperate parties were in arms against the constitution. The 
right honorable gentleman belonged to orie of those parties, and 
deserved death. I could not join the rebel — I could not join the 
government — I could not join torture — I could not join half-hang- 
ing — I could not join free quarter — I could take part with neither. 
I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be active 
without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety. 



614 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me : I respect 
their opinions, but I keep my own ; and I think now, as I thought 
then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people 
was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the 2:)eople against the 
minister. 

I have returned, not as the right honorable member has said, to 
raise another storm ; I have returned to discharge an honorable 
debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for 
past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my 
desert. I have returned to protect that constitution, of which I was 
the pai-ent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as 
the honorable gentlemen and his unworthy associates. They are 
corrupt ; they are seditious ; and they, at this very moment, are in 
a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a 
libel as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appella- 
tion of a report of a committee of the Lords. Here I stand ready 
for impeachment or trial ; I dare accusation. I dety the honorable 
gentleman ; I defy the government ; I defy their whole phalanx ; let 
them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them 
quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my 
constitution on the floor of this House in defence of the liberties of 
my country. 



SPEECHES, 



Daniel O'Connell, M. P. 



[615] 



Speech at Limerick, I812 



Ip FEEL it my duty, as a professed agitator, to address the 
f^ meeting. It is merely in the exercise of my office of agitation, 
l^r" that I think it necessary to say a fewwords. For any purpose 
i of ilkistration or argument, further discourse is useless : all 
the topics which the present period suggested, have been treated of 
■with sound judgment, and a rare felicity of diction, by my respected 
and talented friend (Mr. Eoche) ; all J shall do is, to add a few 
observations to what has fallen from that gentleman ; and whilst I 
sincerely admire the happy style in which he has treated those sub- 
jects, I feel deep regret at being unable to imitate his excellent 
discourse. 

And, tirst, let me concur with him in congratulating the Catholics 
of Limerick on the progress our great cause has made since we were 
last assembled. Since that period our cause has not rested for sup- 
port on the cftbrts of those alone who were immediately interested ; 
no, our Protestant brethren throughout the land have added their 
zealous exeiiions for our emancipation. They have, with admirable 
patriotism, evinced their desire to conciliate by serving us, and I am 
sure I do but justice to the Catholics, when I pi'oclaim our gratitude, 
as written on our hearts, and to be extinguished only with our lives. 

Nor has the support and the zeal of our Protestant brethren been 
vain and baiTcn. No, it has been productive of great and solid ad- 
vantages ; it has procured, for the cause of religious liberty, the 
respect even of the most bigoted of our opponents ; it has struck 
down English prejudice ; it has convinced the mistaken honest ; it 
has terrified the hypocritical knaves : and finally, it has pronounced 
for us, by a great and triumphant majority, from one of the branches 
of the legislature, the distinct i-ecognition of the propriety and the 
necessity of conceding justice to the great body of the Irish people. 

(617) 



(318 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Let us, therefore, rejoice in our mutual success ; let us rejoice in 
the near approach of freedom ; let us rejoice in the prospect of soon 
shaking off our chains, and of the speedy extinction of our griev- 
ances. But above all, let us rejoice at the means by which these 
happy effects have been produced ; let us doubly rejoice, because 
they afford no triumph to any part of the Irish nation over the other 
— that they are not the result of any contention among ourselves ; 
but constitute a victory, obtained for the Catholics by the Protest- 
ants — that they prove the liberality of the one, and require the 
eternal gratitude of the other — that they prove and promise the 
eternal dissolution of ancient animosities and domestic feuds, and 
afford to every Christian and to every patriot, the cheering certainty 
of seeing peace, harmony, and benevolence prevail in that country, 
■where a wicked and perverted policy has so long and so fatally 
jDropagated and encouraged dissension, discord, and rancor. 

We owe it to the liberality of the Irish Protestants — to the zeal of 
the Irish Presbyterians — to the fi-iendly exertion- of the Irish Quak- 
ers ; we owe, to the cordial re-union of every sect and denomination 
of Irish Christians, the progress of our cause. Tliey have i)i-ocured 
for us the solemn and distinct promise and pledge of the House of 
Commons — they almost obtained for us a similar declaration from 
the House of Lords. It was lost by the petty majority of one — it 
was lost by a majority, not of those who listened to the absurd 
prosings of Lord Eldon, to the bigoted and turbid declamation of 
that English Chief Justice, whose sentiments so forcibly recall the 
memor}^ of the star-chamber ; not of those who were able to com- 
pare the vapid or violent folly of the one partj^ with the states- 
man-like sentiments, the profound arguments, the splendid eloquence 
of the jNIarquis Wellesley. Not of those who heard the i-easonings 
of our other illustrious advocates ; but by a majority of men who 
acted upon preconceived opinions, or, from a distance, carried into 
effect their bigotry, or, perhaps, worse propensities — who availed 
themselves of that absurd jirivilcge of the peerage, Avhich enables 
those to decide who have not heard — which permits men to pro- 
nounce upon subjects they have not discussed — and allows a final 
determination to precede argument. 

It was not, however, to this privilege alone, that our want of suc- 
cess was to be attributed. The very principle upon which the present 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. (519 

administration has been formed, was brought into immediate action, 
and with success ; for, in the latter periods of the present reign, 
«very administration has had a distiuct principle upon which it was 
formed, and which serves the historian to explain all its movements. 
Thus, the principle of the Pitt administration was — to deprive the 
people of all share in the government, and to vest all power and au- 
thority in the crown. In short, Pitt's views amounted to unqualified 
despotism. This great object he steadily pursued through his ill- 
starred career. It is true he encouraged commerce, but it was for 
the purposes of taxation ; and he used taxation for the purposes of 
•corruption ; he assisted the merchants, as long as he could, to grow 
rich, and they lauded him ; he bought the people with their own 
money, and they praised him. Each succeeding day produced some 
new inroad on the constitution; and the alarm which he excited, by 
reason of the I)lood3' woi-kings of the French revolution, enabled him 
to rule the land with uncontrolled swaj^ ; he had bequeathed to his 
successor the accumulated power of the crown — a power which 
must be great, if it can sustain the nojientities of the present admin- 
istration. 

The principle of Pitt's administration was despotism ; the principle 
of Perceval's administration was peculating bigotry — bigoted pecu- 
lation ! In the name of the Lord he plundered the people. Pious 
and enlightened statesman ! he would take their money only for the 
good of their souls. 

The principle of the present administration is still more obvious. 
It has unequivocally disclosed itself in all its movements — it is 
simple and single — it consists in falsehood. Falsehood is the bond 
and link that connects this ministry in office. Some of them pretend 
to be our friends ; you know it is not true ; they are only our worse 
enemies for the hypocrisy. They declare that the Catholic question 
is no longer opposed by the cabinet — that it is left to the discretion 
of each individual retainer. The fact is otherwise — and their 
retainers, though not commanded, as formerly, are carefully advised 
to vote against us. 

The minister. Lord Castlereagh, is reported to have said in the 
House of Commons, that in the year 1797 and 1798, there was no 
torture in Ireland, to the knowledge of government ! Is it really 
possible that such an assertion was used ? You hear it with aston- 



620 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ishment. All Ireland must sliudcler, that any man could be found 
thus to assert. Good God ! of what materials must that man be made 
who could say so ? I restrain my indignation ; I withhold all ex- 
pressions of surprise ; the simple statement that such an assertion 
was used, exceeds, in reply, the strongest language of reprobation. 
But there is no man so stupid as not to recognize the principle which 
I have so justly attributed to this administration. 

What ! No torture ! Great God ! No torture ! Within the walls 
of your city was there no torture? Could not Colonel Verckcr have 
informed Lord Castlcrcagh, that the lash resounded in the streets 
even of Limerick, and that the human groan assailed the wearied ear 
of humanity ? Yet I am ready to give the gallant colonel every 
credit he deserves ; and, therefore, I recall to your grateful recollec- 
tion tlie day when he risked his life to punish one of the instruments 
of torture. Colonel Vcreker can tell whether it be not true, that iu 
the streets of your city, the servant of his relation, Mrs. Rosslewen, 
■was not tortured — whether he was not tortured first, for the crime 
of having expressed a single sentiment of compassion, and next 
because Colonel Vereker interfered for him. 

But there is an additional fact which is not so generally known, 
which, perhaps. Colonel Vcreker himself does not know, and which 
I have learned from a highly respectable clergyman, that this sad 
victim of the system of torture, which Lord Castlereagli denied, was, 
at the time he was scourged, in an infirm state of health; that the 
flogging inflicted on him deprived him of all understanding, and that 
within a few months he died insane, and without having recovered a 
shadow of reason. 

But why, out of the myriads of victims, do I select a solitary 
instance? Because he was ix native of your city, and his only 
offence an expression of compassion. I might tell you, did you not 
alread}' know it, that in Dublin there were, for weeks, tiiree 
permanent triangles, constantly supplied with the victims of a 
promiscuous choice made by the army, the yeomanry, the police 
constables, and the Orange lodges ; that the shrieks of the tortured 
must have literally resounded in the state apartments of the 
Castle ; and that along by the gate of the Castle yard, a human 
being, naked, tarred, feathered, with one ear cut ofl", and the blood 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. ' g21 

streaming from his lacerated back, has been hunted by a troop of 
barbariaus ! 

AVh}'' do I disgust you with these horrible recollections ? You 
want not the proof of the principle of delusion on which the present 
administration exists. In your own afi'airs you have abundant evi- 
dence of it. Tlie fact is, that the proxies in the Lords would never 
have produced a majority even of one against Lord Wellesley's 
motion, but for the exertion of the vital principle of the administra- 
tion. The ministry got the majority of one. The pious Lord Eldon, 
■with all his conscience and his calculations, and that immaculate dis- 
tributor of criminal justice, Lord Ellenborough, were in a majority 
of. one. By what holy means think you? Why, by the aid of that 
which cannot be described in dignified language — by the aid of a lie 

— a false, positive, palpable lie ! 

This manoeuvre was resorted to — a scheme worthy of its authors 

— they had perceived the effects of the manly and dignified resolu- 
tions of the 18th of June. These resolutions had actually terrified 
our enemies, whilst they cheered those noble and illustrious friends 
\vho had preferred the wishes and wants of the people of Ireland to 
the gratification of jxiltry and disgraceful minions. The manoeuvre — 
the scheme, was calculated to get rid of the efiiect of those resolu- 
tions, nay, to turn their force against us, and thus was the pious 
fraud effected. 

There is, you have heard, a newspaper, in the permanent pay of 
peculation and corruption, printed in London, under the name of 
the "Courier," a paper worthy the meridian of Constantinople, at 
its highest tide of despotism. This paper was directed to assert the 
receipt of a letter from Dublin, from excellent authority, declaring, 
I know not how many peers, sons of peers, and baronets had retract- 
ed the resolutions of the 18th of June ; that those resolutions were 
carried by surprise, and that they had been actually rescinded at a 
subsequent meeting. 

Never did human baseness invent a more gross untruth ; never 
did a more unfounded lie fall from the father of falsehood ; never 
did human turpitude submit to become the vehicle of so " glaring " 
a dereliction from truth. But the " Courier" I'eceived its pay, and 
it was ready to earn the wages of its prostitution. It did so — it 
published the foul falsehoods with the full knowledge of their false- 



622 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

hood ; it published them in two editions, the day before and the day 
of the debute — at a period when inquiry was useless — when a con- 
tradiction from authority could not arrive ; at that moment this base 
trick Avas played, through the intervention of that newspaper, upon 
the British public ! 

Will that public go too far when they charge this impure strata- 
gem on those whose purposes it served ? Why, even in this coun- 
try, the administration deems it necessary to give, for the support 
of one miserable paper, two places — one of live, and the other of 
eight hundred a year — the stamp duty remitted — the proclama- 
tions paid for .as advertisements — and a permanent bonus of one 
thousand pounds per annum ! If the bribe here be so high, what 
must it be in England, where the toil is so much greater? And, 
think you, then, that the "Courier" pul)lished, unsanctioned by its 
paymasters, this useful lie? 

I come now to the next stage in the system of delusion ; it is 
that which my friend, Mr. O'Neil, has noticed. He has powerfully 
exposed to you the absurdity of crediting the ministerial news- 
papers, when they informed j'ou that the member for Limerick had 
stated in the House of Commons, that the commercial interests of 
Limerick were opposed to the Catholic claims. Sir, for my part, I 
entirely agree with Mr. O'Neil ; I am sure Colonel Vereker said no 
such thing; he is a bravo man, and, therefore, a man of truth; he 
is probably a pleasant friend, and he has those manly traits about 
him which make it not unpleasant to oppose him as an enemy ; I 
like the candor of his character, and our opposition to him should 
assume the same frankness, and openness, and perfect determina- 
tion. He well knows that a great part of the commercial interests 
of Limerick is in the hands of the Catholics — that the Quakers of 
Limerick, who possess almost the residue of trade, are friendly to 
us, and that, with the exception of the "tag, rag, and bob-tail" of 
the corporation, there is not to be found amongst the men who 
ought to be his constituents a single exception to liberality. 

There remains another delusion ; it is the darling deception of 
this ministry — that which has reconciled the toleration of Lord 
Castlcreagh with the intolerance of Lord Liverpool ; it is that 
which has sanctified the connection between both, and the place- 
procuring, prayer-mumbling Wilberforce ; it consists in sanctions 



DANIEL O'CONNELL, 623 

and securities. The Catiiolics may be emancipated, say ministers in 
public, but they must give securities ; by securities, say the same 
ministers in private, to their supporting bigots, we mean nothing 
definite, but something that shall certainly be inconsistent with the 
Popish religion — nothing shall be a security which they can possi- 
bly concede — and we shall deceive them and secure you, whilst we 
carry the air of liberality and toleration. 

And can there be any honest man deceived by the cant and cry 
for securities ? — is there any man that believes that there is safety 
in oppression, contumely, and insult, and that security is necessary 
against protection, liberality and conciliation? — does any man 
really suppose, that there is no danger from the continuance of 
unjust grievance and exasperating intolerance ; and that security is 
wanting against the effects of justice and perfect toleration? Who- 
is it that is idiot enough to believe that he is quite safe in dissension,, 
disunion, and animosity ; and wants a protection against harmony,, 
benevolence, and charity ? — that in hatred there is safety — in affec- 
tion, ruin? — that now, that we are excluded from the constitution, 
we may be loyal — but that if we were entrusted, personally, in its 
safety, we shall wish to destroy it? 

But this is a pitiful delusion : there was, indeed, a time, when 
" sanctions and securities " might have been deemed necessary — 
when the Catholic was treated as an enemy to man and to God — 
when his property was the prey of legalized plunder — his religion 
and its sacred ministers the object of legalized persecution ! — when, 
in defiance and contempt of the dictates of justice, and the faith of 
treaties — and I attest the venerable city in which I stand, that 
solemn treaties were basely violated — the English faction in the 
land turned the Protestant into an intolerant and murderous bigot, 
in order that it might, in security, plunder that very Protestant and 
oppress his and our common country ! Poor neglected Ireland ! 
At that period, securities might be supposed wanting; the people 
of Ireland — the Catholic population of Ireland were then as brave 
and as strong, comparatively, as they are at present ; and the coun- 
try then afforded advantages for the desultory warfare of a valiant 
peasantry, which, fortunately, have since been exploded by increas- 
ing cultivation. 

At the period to which I allude, the Stuart family were still ia 



G24: TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

existence ; they possessed a strong claim to the exaggerating alle- 
giance and unbending fidelity of the Irish peof)le. Every right that 
hereditary descent could give the royal race of Stuart, they pos- 
sessed — in private life, too, they were endeared to the Irish, because 
they were, even the worst of them, gentlemen. But tlicy had still 
stronger claims on the sympathy and generosity of the Irish : they 
had been exalted and were fallen — they had possessed thrones and 
kingdoms, and were then in poverty and humiliation. All the 
enthusiastic sympathies of the Irish heart were roused for them — 
and all the powerful motives of personal interest bore, in the same 
channel, the restoration of their rights — the triumph of their reli- 
gion, the restitution of their ancient inheritances, would then have 
been the certain and immediate consequences of the success of the 
Stuart family in their pretensions to the throne. 

At the period to which I allude, the Catholic clergy wore bound 
by no oath of allegiance ; to be a dignitary of the Catholic church in 
Ireland was a transportable felony — and the oath of allegiance was 
so intermingled with religious tenets, that no clergyman or layman 
of the Catholic persuasion could possibly take it. At that period, 
the Catholic clergj'^ were all educated in foreign countries, under 
the eye of the Pope, and within the inspection of the house of 
Stuart. From fifty-eight colleges and convents on the Continent 
did the Catholic clergy repair to meet, for the sake of their God, 
poverty, persecution, contumely, and, not unfrequently, death in 
their native land. They were often hunted like wild beasts, and 
never could claim any protection from the law ! That — that was a 
period when securities might Avell have been necessary — when 
sanctions and securities might well have been requisite. 

But what was the fact? what was the truth which history vouches? 
Wliy, that the clergy and laity of the Irish Catholics, having once 
submitted to the new government — having once plighted their ever 
unbroken faith to King William and his successors — having once 
submitted to that great constitutional principle, that in extreme 
cases the will of the people is the sole law, that in extreme cases the 
people have the clear and undoubted right to cashier a tyrant, and 
provide a substitute on the throne — the Irish Catholics, having 
fought for their legitimate sovereign, until he, himself, and not they, 
fled from the strife — adopted, by treaty, his English successor, 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 625 

though not his heir, transferred to that successor, and the inheritors 
of his throne, their allegiance. They have preserved their covenant ; 
with all the temptations and powerful motives to disaffection, they 
fulfilled their part of the social contract, even in despite of its viola- 
tion by the other party. 

How do I prove the continued loyalty of the Catholics of Ireland 
under every persecution ? I do not appeal for any pi'oofs to their 
own records, however genuine — I appeal merely to the testimony of 
their rulers and their enemies — I appeal to the letters of Primate 
Boulter, to the state-papers of the humane and patriotic Chestertield. 
I have their loj^alty through the admissions of every secretary and 
governor of Ireland, until it is finally and conclusively put on record 
by the legislature of Ireland itself. The relaxing statutes expressly 
declare, that the penal laws ought to be repealed — not from motives 
of policy or growing liberality, but (I quote the words) "because of 
the long-continued and uninterrupted loyalty of the Catholics." This 
is the consummation of my proof, and I defy the veriest disciple of 
the doctrine of delusion to overturn it. 

But as the Catholics were faithful in those dismal and persecuting 
periods — when they were exasperated by the emaciating cruelty of 
barbarous law and wretched policy ; as they were then faithful, 
notwithstanding every temporal and every religious temptation and 
excitement to the contrary, is it in human credulity to believe my 
Lord Castlereagh, when he asserts that securities are now necessary? 
Now that the ill-fated house of Stuart is extinct — and had it not 
been extinct I should have been silent as to what their claims were 
— now that the will of the people and the right of hereditary succes- 
sion are not to be separated ; now that the Catholic clergy are 
educated in Ireland, and are all bound by their oaths of allegiance to 
that thi'one and constitution which, in the room of persecution, gives 
them protection and securit}' ; now that all claims upon forfeited 
property are totally extinguished in the impenetrable night of 
obscurity and oblivion; now that the Catholic nobility and gentry 
are in the enjoyment of many privileges and franchises, and that the 
full particiiDation of the constitution opens upon us in close and 
cheering prospect, shall we be told that secui'itics are now expedient, 
though they were heretofore unnecessary ? Oh ! it is a base and 
dastardly insult upon our understandings, and on our principles, and 



(326 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

one which each of us would, iu private life, resent, as in public wo 
proclaim it to the contempt unci execration of the universe. 

Long as I have trespassed on jou, I cannot yet close : I have a 
word to address to you upon your own conduct. The representativa 
for your city, Colonel Vereker, has openly opposed your liberties ; 
he has opposed even the consideration of your claims. You ai-e 
beings, to be sure, with human countenances and the limbs of men, 
but you are not men, the iron has entered into your souls and 
branded the name of slave upon them, if you submit to be thus 
trampled on ! His opposition to you is decided; meet him with a 
similar, and, if possible, a superior hostility. You deserve not 
freedom, you, citizens of Limerick, with the monuments of the valor 
of 3'our ancestors around you ; you are less than men, if my feeble 
tongue be requisite to rouse you into activity. Your city is, at 
present, nearly a close borough ; do but will it, and 3'ou make it 
free. 

I know legal olistacles have l)een thrown in your way ; I know 
that, for months past, the Recorder has sat alone at the sessions ; 
that he has not only tried cases, in the absence of any other magis- 
trate, which lie is not autharized by law to do, but that he has solely 
opened and adjourned the sessions, which, in my opinion, he is 
clearly unwarranted in doing ; he has, by this means, I know, delayed 
the registry of your freeholds, because two magistrates are necessary 
for that purpose : I have, however, the satisfaction to tell you, that 
the Court of King's Bench will, in the next term have to determine 
on the legality of his conduct, and of that of the other charter 
magistrates, who have banished themselves, I understand, from the 
Sessions Court, since the registry has been spoken of! They siiall 
be served with the regular notices ; and, depend upon it, this scheme 
cannot long retai'd you. 

I speak to you on this subject as a lawj^er — you can l)est judge 
in what estimation my opinion is amongst you — but such as it is, I 
pledge it to you, that you can easily obviate the pi'esent obstacles to 
the I'cgistry of your freeholds. I can also assure you that the con- 
stitution of your city is perfectly free ; that the sons of freemen, and 
all those who have served an apprenticeship to a freeman, are all 
entitled to their freedom, and to vote for the representation of your 
city. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 627 

I can tell you more : that if you bring your candidate to a poll, 
your adversary will be deprived of any aid from non-resident or 
occasional freemen ; we will strike off his list the freemen from Gort 
and Gal way, the freemen from the band, and many from the battalion 
of the city of Limerick militia. 

In short, the opening of the borough is a matter of little difficulty. 
If 3'ou will but form a committee, and collect funds, in your opulent 
city, you will soon have a repi'csentative ready to obey your voice ; 
you cannot want a candidate. If the emancipation bill passes next 
sessions, as it is so likely to do, and that no other candidate oifers, 
I myself will bring your present number to the poll. I probably 
will have little chance of success, but I will have the satisfaction of 
showing this city, and the county, what the freeborn mind might 
achieve if it were properly seconded. 

I conclude by conjuring you to exert yourselves ; waste not j'our 
just resentments in idle applause at the prospect I open to you; 
let not the feeling of the moment be calumniated as a hasty ebul- 
lition of anger ; let it not be transitory, as our resentments gen- 
erally are, but let us remember ourselves, our children and our 
country ! 

Let me not, however, close, without obviating any calumny that 
may be flung upon my motives. I can easily pledge myself to you 
that they are disinterested and pure — I trust they are more. My 
object in the attainment of emancipation is in nothing personal, save 
in the feelings which parental love inspires and gratifies. I am, I 
trust, actuated by that sense of Christianity which teaches us that 
the first duty of our religion is benevolence and universal charity ; 
I am, I know, actuated by the determination to rescue our common 
country from the weakness, the insecurity, which dissension and 
religious animosity produce and tend to perpetuate ; I wish to see 
the sti-ength of the island — this unconquercd, this unconquerable 
island — combined to resist the mighty foe of freedom, the extin- 
guisher of civil liberty, who rules the Continent from Petersburgh to 
the verge of the Irish bayonets in Spain. It is his interest, it is a 
species of duty he owes to his family — to that powerful house which 
he has established on the ruins of the thrones and dominations of 
Europe — to extinguish, forever, representative and popular govern- 
ment in these countries ; he has the same direct intent which the 



(328 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Konum general had to invade our beloved country — " lit libertas 
veluti et coiispectu." His power can be resisted only by com- 
bining 3'our physical force with your enthusiastic and undaunted 
hearts. 

There is liberty amongst you still. I could not talk as I do, of 
the LiveriDOols and Castlereaghs, of his court, even if he had the 
folly to employ such things — I wish he had ; you have the protection 
of many a salutary law — of that palladium of personal liberty, 
the trial by jury. I wish to ensure your liberties, to measure your 
interests on the present order of the state, that we may protect the 
very men that oppress us. 

Yes, if Ireland be fairly roused to the battle of the country and 
of freedom, all is safe. Britain has been often conquered : the 
Romans conquered her — the Saxons conquered her — the Nor- 
mans conquered her — in short, whenever she was invaded, she 
was conquered. But our country was never subdued; we never 
lost our liberties in battle, nor did we ever submit to armed con- 
queroi's. It is true, the old inhabitants lost their country in piece- 
meal, by fraud and treachery ; they relied upon the faith of men, 
who never, never observed a treaty with them, until a new and 
mixed race has sprung up, in dissension and discord ; but the Irish 
heart and soul still predominate and pervade the sons of the oppress- 
ors themselves. The generosity, the native bravery, the imiate 
fidelity, the enthusiastic love of whatever is great and noble — those 
splendid characteristics of tiie Irish mind remain as the imperishable 
relics of our countrj-'s former greatness — of that illustrious period, 
when she was the light and the glory of barbarous Europe — when 
the nations around sought for instruction and example in her numer- 
ous seminaries — and when the civilization and religion of all 
Europe were preserved in her alone. 

You will, my friends, defend her — j'ou may die, but you cannot 
yield to any foreign invader. Whatever be my fate, I shall be 
happy, whilst I live, in reviving amongst you the love and admira- 
tion of your native land, and in calling upon Irishmen — no matter 
how they may worship their common God — to sacrifice every con- 
temptible prejudice on the altar of their common country. For 
myself, I shall conclude,' by expressing the sentiment that throbs 
in my heart — I shall express it in the language of a young bard of 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 629 

Erin, and my beloved friend, whose delightful muse has the sound 
of the ancient minstrelsy — 

" Still slialt thou be my midnight dream — 
Thy glory still my waking theme ; 
And ev'ry thought and wish of mine, 
TJnconquered Erin, shall be thine I " 



630 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Speech 

In the British Catholic Association, on the Defeat of the 
Emancipation Bill. 



May 26th, 1825. ' 

Ski^HE measure of which we complained is of too recent a date, 
^^ the injury which wc have sustained is yet too fresh, too gall- 
^ ing in its effects, to allow my reason to assume the ascendant 
™ over my feelings, and to give my judgment time to operate 
on, and influence the tenor of my reflections. I shall nevertheless 
be as respectful in my allusions, and as moderate in the remarks I 
have to ofier, as the overboiling fervency of my Irish blood will 
permit. By rejecting that bill which the Commons had sent up to 
them for their concurrence and approval, the House of Lords has 
inflicted a vital injury on the stability of English power, and on 
Irish feelings and Irish honesty. They, however, would not be cast 
down by that injury. The Catholics were sometimes in derisioa 
termed "Roman." I am a Catholic, and proud am I to say that in 
one thing at least I am a Eoman — I never will despair. But on 
what is this boastful assertion founded? Why should I say that 
which I feel has not reason or sound policy to support it? Where 
now, I would ask, is there a rational hope for a Catholic? Where 
shall I look for consolation under the present great and serious dis- 
appointment? Am I to look back? Alas ! there is nothing cheer- 
ing in the events which have for some time past met us on the way 
to success and dashed our hopes to the earth. Does history furnish, 
any grounds for the supposition that those who have been found 
incapable of maintaining their plighted faith, and preserving the 
terms of a great national contract, will now, in the hour of success, 
be induced to yield any reason, any inducement to us to proceed in 
the course we have adopted? Is this, I would ask, the example 




O'CONNELL'S MONUMENT, GLASNEVIN CEMETERY. 



DANIEL 0-<_ONNELL. 53I 

the Irish Catholics gave, when they had ou two occasions come into 
power? Did they, in the reign of Mary, seek by retaliation to 
avenge the blood of their slaugiitered ancestors ? No ! thank God, 
they did not ! and that at least was one triumphant consideration. 
Not one drop of Protestant blood had been shed — not one particle 
of Protestant property had been then sacrificed. In the reign of 
James 11, the Catholics again came into ^^ower, and their conduct 
was marked by the same spirit of forbearance. I have heard it 
justly stated in the House of Commons — no, I must not say that, 
but I saw it in the newspapers, in the powerful speech of Mr. 
Twiss, which was distinguished alike for vigor of thought, strength 
of reasoning, and historical accuracy, that in the reign of James 
there were but fourteen Protestants in the House of Commons, and 
eight or ten in the House of Lords ; the rest were Catholics. Were 
Protestants excluded from it by law? No, the peojalc retiu'ned both 
Protestants and Catholics ; and no one then stood up to say that a 
man should not be permitted to sit in parliament unless he heard 
Mass and attend auricular confession. No, no, it was left to their 
enemies to say that Catholics should not be admitted there, for the 
sacrifice of the Mass was impious and idolatrous. 

Mr. O'Connell then attended to a statement made by Mr. Daw.son, who tlioiight 
fit to attribute persecution to the Irish Catholics in the reigu of the second James, 
ou the authority of Archbishop King, who was I'efuted by Rev. Dr. Leslie, aud yet, 
in 1825, is quoted in parliament to convict the Catholics of Ireland. He next 
entered into a brief history and defence of the Irish Catholic Association, and 
reprobated the penal act which extinguished that body. 

I call on the Catholics of England to co-operate with those of Ire- 
land for the repeal of this act, for it is a step to return to the old 
penal law ; and how can I tell the people of Ireland they ought to 
be tranquil, aud not ferment in their hearts that black stuff which 
makes political discontent mischievous — that fire suppressed, that 
explodes only the more dangerouslj' on account of the compression 
that has withheld it? How can I tell the people of Ireland to hope, 
when they see this unprincipled, disastrous measure has been ad(j[)ted ? 
I confess I do find ground for hope in the things called arguments 
which are employed against ns, if I had not seen any in the records 
of ancient history, in the violation of ti'eaties, and the recent case 
of the suppression of the Catholic Association. I begin with the 



(332 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

first in dignity, the keeper of the King's English conscience; for 
the King, mj lord, has three consciences — he has an English con- 
science, and the keeper of it is a liberal, and turns to the liberal side 
of it; he has an Irish conscience, and I hope the keeper of it will 
soon be a liberal person, and he will turn to the liberal side of it; 
and his Majesty, my lord, has a Hanoverian conscience ; that con- 
science is in his own keeping ; it has no contradicting colors or dif- 
ering sides — it is all liberality and justice. Who cannot see that 
the guilt of refusing that to us which the King personally gives to 
his Hanoverian sulijects, lies in the miserable machinery of a bor- 
oughmongering administration, which prevents the King from doing 
justice to all ? 

There were two other objections against us. I thank the quarter 
from wliicli they come : I thank him sincerely for the first of them, 
for I must unafl'ectedly admit its truth and justice, and I will abide 
the event of it fairlj^ It was this : if you emancipate the Catholics, 
said the Lord Chancellor, you must equally give liberty of conscience 
to all classes of Dissenters. I thank you heartily, my Lord Eldou ; 
that is exactly what we say ; our petition is that ; we do not come 
before parliament, making a comparison of theological doctrines : we 
revere our own ; we are not indifierent to them : we know their 
awful importance, but we say liberty of conscience is a sacred right. 
[A voice from the crowd : " You have it."] I thank the gentleman 
"whose voice I hear. You, my Lord Duke, possess liberty of con- 
science. Are you not the premier peer of England — could anyone 
deprive you of that right? Could the King upon his throne, or the 
Chancellor on his bench, make any decree against it, if your con- 
science permitted? There is such a liberty of conscience as that 
alluded to in Spain, where eveiy man is at liberty to be of the relig- 
ion of the ruling power ; but now that Ferdinand is returned, no 
man is allowed to dissent from that religion : and I'et me not be 
brought to prefer the Cortes to him. They trod upon the Church, 
and threw away the people, and deserved to lose their power. The 
Dissenters have it not, for neither Smith, of Norwich, nor Wilks, 
the Secretary of that excellent Association for Liberty of Conscience 
(who puljlished in their own, my creed on that subject), they could 
not fill an office in any corporation, for the moment they were jiro- 
posod, the opposite candidate would tell them. "You have not 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. . 633 

taken the sacramental test," and the election would be void, and the 
candidate who had fewest votes would be returned. This was good 
and fair reason to hope that the principle is calculated, in spite of 
miserable bigotry and individual acrimony, to make its way all over 
England. The liberal portion of the Dissenters are with us. I find, 
therefore, reason to hope. Liberty of conscience is our principle, 
and even in despair I would retain it ; for I am confident that force 
may make hypocrites, but not true believers ; it may compel out- 
ward profession, but it is not in man's power to change the heart ; 
and because I know that force is always resorted to by him that 
thinks he has the worst of the argument. But, for my part, being 
conscientiously convinced of the superiority of the Catholic i-eligion 
over every other — and putting it to this awful test of sincerity, that 
I know an eternitj' depends on it — with that awful conviction, all I 
ask of my Protestant brethren, who believe their own religion to be 
the best, is, that they would give the same practical proof of their 
conviction of its supei'iority. Let them give their religion what I 
ask for mine — a clear stage and no favor, and let the advantage be 
decided by conscientious men and Lhe will of the eternal God. 

Another argument of the Lord Chancellor was — it seemed, 
indeed, rather a word than an argument — that this was a Protestant 
constitution, and the words "Protestant constitution " came out very 
frequently. This was rather an assertion than an argument, and it 
has this defect as an asertion, that it happens, my lord, not to be 
true. There are four descendants amongst the Catholic nobility of 
the day of the barons who extorted Magna Charta from a t3'rant. It 
was Catholics who instituted the hereditary succession in the House 
of Lords as a separate House : it was Catholics who instituted the 
representation of the people in the House of Commons : it was 
Catholics who instituted trial by jury, standing as a shield between 
the people and power, making the administration of the law a domes- 
tic concern, and preventing any man giving a false and flagitious ver- 
dict to-day in favor of despotism, lest he himself should be the victim 
the next. Are not these ingredients in the constitution ? I would 
not forget the treason law of Edward IIL, which is the perfection of 
wisdom in that respect, for many and many a victim would have 
been sent out to pi-emature death and destruction but for the advan- 
tage of that Catholic statute of Edward HI. ; and whenever despotism 



(534 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

has ruled over this countiy, the first step that has been taken, from- 
time to time, and it was one which immediately followed the Refor- 
mation, was to repeal that Catholic statute, and deprive the people of 
its benefits. We have it now ; but though we have it now through 
its being restored by a Protestant parliament, it was drawn up by 
Catholic hands, it was passed by Catholic votes, it was signed by a 
Catholic King, and will Lord Eidon tell me that the treason law, the 
trial by jury, the House of Lords, and the otEce of Cbanccllor, too, 
are no portions of this Protestant constitution ? If that oflice did not 
exist, I suspect that the Protestantism of the Chancellor would not 
be so extremely vivid as it is at present. The seals he bears, the 
mace wliich is carried before him, were borne by, and carried before 
many and many a Catholic bishop ; and the first layman who held 
them was the martyred Sir Thomas More, who, as it was well said 
in parliament, left the office with ten pounds in his pocket ; a Catho- 
lic example to the present Protestant Chancellor. 

Protestant constitution ! What is it, if money be not one of the 
valuable concci'ns of the constitution? Will the Chancellor say it is 
not? If the constitution be Protestant, let the Protestants pay the 
tithes and the taxes ; let them pay the church rates and the Grand 
Jury cess for us in Ireland. If it be a Protestant constitution let it 
be so entirely : let us not have to fight their battles or pay their 
taxes. This is the admirable and inimitable equity of the Lord 
Chancellor. Here is the keeper of a conscience for j'ou ! Here is a 
distributor of equity. It shall be Protestant to the extent of every- 
thing that is valuable and useful : to the extent of everything that 
is rewarding and dignified ; for everyplace of emolument and author- 
ity, and everything that elevates a man, and is thj i-ecompense of 
legitimate ambition. To this extent it shall be Protestant ; but for 
the burdens of the state ; for the shedding of human blood in defence 
of the throne ; for all that bears on a man, even to the starvation of 
his family by the weight of taxation which so few are able to pay in 
this country, and by which so many have been reduced to poverty in 
Ireland (for have I not seen the miserable blanket, and the single 
potato pot, sold by the tax gatherer in my native country ?) Oh, 
shall I, I say, be told that for all that is useful the constitution shall 
be Protestant, and that it shall cease to be so the moment there is 
anything of oppression, money-making, grinding, or taxation? I^ 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 635; 

it just to take the entire value and give no valuable consideration in 
return ? Is it just to accept lul)or and pay no wages ? Is this equity 
in the High Coui't of Chancery ? From your tribunal I appeal to 
the living God, who shall judge us all, and in His presence I proclaim 
the foul iniquity, the barefaced injustice of loading us with all the 
burdens of the state, and keeping us from its advantages. 

After the Chancellor I would refer to the speech of a Right Rever- 
end Bishop, which was said to have been sonorous, musical and 
well delivered — highly pleasing to his party. It reminded him of a 
story told by Addison, who heard a lady in a carriage utter a loud 
scream, and supposing her suflering under some violence or injury, 
inquired what was the matter, and was told nothing ; but the lady 
had been told she had a fine voice, and had been showing it by 
screaming. She only wished to make an exhibition. The bishop, 
too, was only screaming, and had formerly screamed the other way. 
The first part of his speech, as I read it in the newspaper, was a good 
essay on disinterestedness ! We were called interested, selfish ; but 
would the Right Reverend Bisliop explain how it was that he had 
formerly been favorably disposed towards the Catholics till he be- 
came tutor to the Earl of Liverpool's nephew, and that then all at 
once a change was effected in his mind. He is young— there are a 
great many other bishops, and he was certainly fortunate in his 
chance, for he adopted, if not a better, yet more enriching faith. It 
might be b}' a miracle — for a Protestant bishop might work miracles 
as well as Prince Hohenlohe— it might be by a miracle that the new 
light broke in on tbe bishop just at the right time ; that he was kept 
in darkness to a certain hour, and then was suddenly made to see 
the danger, and to turn from a friend to an enemy. I have no ob- 
jection to fair enmity, but the Bishop of Chester's enmity was not 
fair. In his speech he had quoted a part of a speech of Doctor 
Dromgoole ; I believe, too, from what I recollect, that the bishop 
quoted an exaggerated version, and he stated that this speech had 
been approved of by the Catholic Association and by all the Cath- 
olic priests, and at Rome. I heard this with great asttniishment, 
for, in fact. Doctor Di'omgoole's speech was the only one I ever 
recollected which had been condemned at a public meeting. 

It had been pronounced late in the evening. I was not present, 
or the sun would not have gone down on it unreproved — and on the 



636 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

next day an extraordinaiy meeting of the Catholic Board was sum- 
moned, and the speech condemned. He called the Protestant faith 
a novelty, and it was stated to him that whatever opinions he chose 
to discuss among theologians, he must not insult the Protestants. 
Where the Bishop of Chester learned that this speech had been ap- 
proved of at Eome I do not know, but I suppose it might be by the 
same vivacity of fancy and the same energy of imagination from 
which he learned that the speech had been approved of in Ireland. 
I arraign him of inventing it. If the Catholic bishops who were 
examined before the lords, — if Doctor Murray, the sanctity of whose 
life was displayed in the suavity of his mannei-s, and who was the 
mildest of all Christians — if Doctor Doyle, whose understanding was 
as vigorous as bis manners were simple, who possessed an exhaust- 
less store of knowledge, and whose gigantic intellect could readily 
■convey them to the mind of every other man ; if these prelates in 
their examination had invented anything like this against the Pro- 
testants, though he revered them as the representatives of those 
Christian bishops who had first established tlie Catholic Faith in Ire- 
land ; if the Lord Bishop of Chester could point out to him any- 
thing in their evidence similar to the invention he had alluded to, I 
will at once brand them as calumniators. I will not say anything of 
this kind to the Bishop of Chester, because I do not belong to the 
same church with him ; but if he will point out to me anything so false 
in their evidence, I will tell the Irish bishops they are liars and 
calumniators, and that they have broken the commandment, for they 
had borne false witness against their neighbor. I would, however, 
say no more of the Bishop of Chester's speech ; but if any more 
positive proof of its error were wanting, he had only to turn over 
the Dublin Evening Post for half an hour, and he would find the 
"whole proceedings of the meeting at \vhich Dr. Dromgoole's speech 
was censured. 

Mr. O'Connell here took occasion to eulogize Mr. Canning, Mr. Plunliett and 
Mr. Brownlow, and contrasted tlie conduct of the latter with that of the Marquis 
of Anglesea. 

The contrcist I was going to ofier, and that which would alone 
make us despair, if I did not know my countrymen better, is that of 
the noble and gallant deserter, the Marquis of Anglesea. He said. 



DANIEL O'COJsNELL. (J37 

now was the time to fight. But, most nohle Marquis, we are not 
going to fight at all, and above all things, most noble Marquis, we 
are not going to fight now, under favor. This may be your time to 
fight — you may want us to fight ere long with you, as you wanted 
us before — your glories and your medals, and your dignities, and 
your titles, were bought by the young blood of Catholic Ireland. 
We fought. Marquis of Anglesea, and you know it well — we fought, 
aud j-ou are Marquis — if we had not fought with you, your island 
of Anglesea would ere this have shrimk into a ealjbage garden. Aud 
where would now have been the mighty conqueror of Europe : he, 
who had talent to command victory, and judgment to look for servi- 
ces, and not creeds to reward men for merits, and not for professions 
of faith ; where would he have been if Ireland had not stood by you ? 
I myself have worn, not only the trappings of woe, but the emblems 
of sincere mourning, for more than one galhuit relative of mine who 
have shed their blood under your commands. We can fight — we 
will fight when England wants us. But we will not fight against her 
at present, and I trust we will not fight for her at all until she does 
us justice. 

But, most noble Marc^uis, though }our soldiers fjught gallantly 
and well with you, iu a war which they were told was just and 
necessary, are 30U quite sure the soldiers will fight in a crusade 
against the unarmed and wretched peasantry of Ireland? Your 
speech is published; it will, when read iu Armagh, and the neigh- 
boring counties, give joy, and will be celebrated in the next Orange 
procession ; and again, as before. Catholic blood will be shed; but, 
most noble Marquis, the earth has not covered all the blood that has 
been so shed ; it cries yet for vengeance to heaven, and not to man ; 
that blood may yet bring on an unfortunate hour of retribution ; and 
if it do, what have you to fight with ? Count you on a gallant army ? 
There are English gentry amongst its oflScers, the sons and descend- 
ants of those who wielded the sword for liberty, never to strike down 
to slavery their fellow men. English chivalry will not join with you, 
most noble Marquis of Anglesea : and though you have deserted her 
and taken the prudent side of the Commandei--in-Chief, yet, gallant 
Marquis, I think you have reckoned without your host. 

Let me tell you this story, sir. I am but an humble individual. 
It happened to me, not many months ago, to be going through Eng- 



(538 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

land; my family were in a carriage, on the box of which I was 
placed; there came up on the road, eight or ten sergeants and cor- 
porals, with two hundred and fifty recruits. I perceived at once the 
couutenauces of my unfortunate countrymen laughing as the}' went 
along, for no other reason than because they were alive. They saw 
me, and some of them recognized me ; they instantly burst from 
their sei'geants and corporals, formed round my carriage, and gave 
me thi'ee cheers, most noble JMarquis. Well, may God bless them, 
wherever they are, poor fellows ! Oh, you reckon without your host, 
let me tell you, when you think that a British army will trample on 
a set of petitioners for their rights — beggars for a little charity, who 
are looking up to you with eyes lifted, and hands bent down. You 
will not fight us now, most noble Marquis; and let me tell you, if 
the battle comes, you shall not have the choice of j'our position 
either. 

But though he is an excellent soldier, the Marquis is a special bad 
logician — no blame to him ; for, in the same speech, he said he was 
still for Catholic emancipation, and would return to us as soon as he 
■was certain that emancipation was consistent with Protestant ascend- 
ancy. Ascendancy forsooth ! Catholic emancipation supposes 
universal equalization of civil eligibility, and it cannot consist with 
the ascendancy of any party. The Marquis is ready to open the 
window to us as soon as he is sure the sun will not shine thi-ough it. 
I am not afraid of his sword. Still less do I feel in peril from his 
logic. The King of Prussia, when the Saxons left him, one fine morn- 
ing, said, "Let them go against us, it is better that all the enemy 
should be together, and all our friends together also." I make a 
pi'esent of you to our opponents, most noble Marquis. Him who thus 
deserted us, and hallooed in the ranks of those whose cry was 
religious dissensions, — him have I contrasted with the true genuine 
Protestant Christian, who, firm in his own opinion, w'as the enemy 
of the Catholics, so long as he believed them to be the enemies of 
liberty, I'eligious and civil ; but who, the moment he was convinced 
that they were equally its friends as himself, became our supporter, 
and set the glorious golden example of a perfect sacrifice of all that 
little pride and jealousy which attach to a change of genuine opinion 
— him have I contrasted with Mr. Brownlow, who, be it ever re- 
membered, stood by no Commander-in-Chief, and who can only 



DANIEL OCONNELL. 639 

expose himself in injury and expense, by a sacrifice to principles 
which the Marquis of Angelsea may admire, but cannot aflbrd pos- 
sibly to imitate. 

Mr. O'Connell then proceeded to panegyrize the public exei'tions of Sir Francis 
Burdett, Lord Nugent, and the Earl of Donoughraore; and passed some severe 
sarcasms on Sir T. Lethbridge and Mr. Banks, senior. 

There was one speech more on which I will say a few words — it 
was the speech of Lord Liverpool. I have never read a polemical 
speech of the noble lord till that. The noble lord seemed to have 
been employed in a manner quite becoming a great statesman ; dis- 
regarding the course which our ancient enemy, France, was pursuing : 
not thinking that she was daily increasing her armies : that she was 
creating an efficient navy ; that she was rapidly paying off her debt ; 
that titheless France was daily improving her resources, and getting 
rid of the burdens which the war had left on her ; that she was building 
a large class of frigates, and appeared as if inclined, on some fit op- 
portunity, to dispute with us once more the empire of the seas. Of 
all these facts the noble lord seemed heedless ; they were perhaps 
beneath the notice of his gxeat mind. He did not calculate on the 
rising generation of America, that country in Avhich alone the Irish 
Catholic has fair play. He did not appear to consider in what time 
a westerly wind, which would shut us up in the channel, would waft 
a fleet to the shores of Ireland, perhaps at some period of distress- 
aud discontent, when arms and not men might be wanting. All 
these were subjects below the consideration of Lord Liverpool's 
great mind. He was busied with one of much greater importance 
to the state. He was engaged in polemical discussions about auricular 
confession and penance, and the mode of administering the sacrament ; 
.and as the result of his studies in those impoi-tant matters, he poured 
forth a rich and luscious discourse on an admiring audience. In the 
course of that speech, the noble lord read tlie House of Commons no 
very gentle lecture for having presumed to send up such a bill. Here 
was another great reformer. It had been said, perhaps untruly, that 
the great majority of the House were sent into their places by several 
members of the Peers : if that were true, it might perhaps account 
for the scolding given for having passed a bill not approved by their 
masters. Be that however as it might, the House of Commons were 



(3J-0 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

scolded — perhaps they deserved it. The noble lord had expressed 
nn opinion, that the religion of several millions of his fellow-subjects 
was such, as to render them unfit for the enjoyment of civil rights 
to the same extent as the Protestant. What new light was it that 
broke upon the noble Earl's mind, so as to produce this impression, . 
so opposite to that which he seemed to feel only one year before ? 

The noble Earl appeared to hold a very different opinion of the 
Irish people last year. On the 8th of April, 1824, he was reported 
to have said in his place in the House, speaking of the Irish, 
"that whatever they may be in their own country, I say of them 
in this, that there does not exist, on the face of the globe, a 
more industrious, a more honest, or more kindly-disposed people. "^ 
Surely they have not changed their religion since then ; and if, 
in 1824, that religion could make them "honest, industzious, and 
kindly-disposed,"' why should it be urged as a ground for exclu- 
sion from the full enjoyment of the rights of British subjects in 
1825? What other use would a statesman make of religion but 
to instill morality and public order? The noble Earl went on in 
the same speech to say, "I think it material to bear this testi- 
mony in their favor, because whatever may be the evils of Ire- 
land, and from whatever source they may proceed, it is impossible 
for any man to imagine that they arise from any defect in the 
people. We may boldly assert that it is impossible to finda 
more valuable class of j^eople in any country in the world." And 
3'et it was this most valuable class of persons that the noble Earl 
in his late address would condemn to eternal exclusion from the 
full benefits of the constitution. Did the noble Earl imagine that 
the drivelling nonsense of Dr. Duigenan, which he had kept bot- 
tled up for seven or eight years, and now drew forth to treat 
the British nation, would drive a people such as he had described 
from their purpose? Let the honest lord stand forth and defend 
his consistency. He had made that speech from which he had 
just given the extract in 1824 ; the second speech was made in 
1825. In the interim the Duke of York had made his declara- 
tion of eternal hostility to the great question of emancipation. 
The Bishop of Chester was not the only convert which that speech 
had made. The noble Earl, to use a vulgar adage, "knew how the 
cat jumped." Oh, my Lord Duke, with what pleasure will this 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 641 

speech of my Lord Liverpool and that of his Royal Highness of York 
be received at the meeting of the allied Sovereigns — those mighty 
despots who, tyi'anuical as they are, still respect the consciences of 
their subjects ? What joy will they not feel at reading this wise 
effusion of England's prime minister? They will in their hearts say, 
"Let it go forth, it will work for our views." They will add: 
^'Kockites, keep your spirits — 

' Durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis.' " 

Or, as Cromwell said, "'Trust in the Lord and rest on your 
pikes.' Matters are going on in the way that you and we and the 
•enemies of England's peace could wish." Such would be the senti- 
ments of all who were envious of England's power, and jealous of 
that freedom by which she acquired it. Their feelings on this sub- 
ject would not be less gratified when they read, if they could believe 
it, the calculation made by Mr. Leslie Foster, showing that the 
population of Ireland was less by two millions than it was generally 
considered. That honorable gentlemen, who was the more fit to be 
the head pedagogue of a large school, than at the head of a respect- 
able county (a situation by the way in which the votes of Catholics 
had helped to place him), had come to parliament with his primer 
and his multiplication table, and endeavored to show that the Catho- 
lics of Ireland wei-e not so numerous by two millions as was gene- 
rally believed. He began by counting the number of children that 
attended some of the charit}' schools, and then taking the number of 
parents that each child had, which was easy to ascertain; but he 
omitted to consider how many children each set of parents had, 
which in Ireland might perhaps be more difficult. He also omitted 
to notice the number of children that never attended at those schools ; 
but the result of his calculation was, that the Catholics were less by 
two millions than their advocates stated them to be. 

I have heard of killing off by computation by Captain Bobadil ; 
but this beat Bobadil quite out. However, the error was not too 
gross for the party to which it was addressed, for the noble Earl 
swallowed it, Bobadil and all. What, I beg calmly to ask, would 
be the effect of the noble lord's deniuiciation of perpetual exclusion, 
upon the four or five millions of Catholics which Mr. Leslie Foster had 
left? (for he would admit for the moment that they were reduced 



642 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

two millions without the aid of Lord Anglesea's broadsword.) They 
were told they could not be free while the Protestant church estab- 
lishment existed, for that their entire emancipation was incompatible 
with the safety of that establishment, was this not in eflect putting- 
every man, woman and child of the five millions of Catholics in hos- 
tihty to that church ? I beg most distinctly to deny the justice of 
the assumption on which this argument of exclusion was founded. 
The Catholics did not wish to see the Protestant church subverted. 
I would solemnly declare, that I would rather perish than see the 
Protestant church subverted and my own church substituted in its 
place. 

The learned gentleman, after adverting to the petitions from England in favor of 
a repeal of the assessed taxes, which amounted to about three millions, proceeded 
to observe, that that sum and much more might be saved to this country, by merely 
doing an act of justice to the Irish people. 

Ireland now costs this country four millions a year more than her 
revenue produced. Let justice be done — let peace and content be 
brought about by this act of just concession, and Ireland, instead of 
being a burden to England, will prove a rich source of wealth and 
strength to the empire. Capital will flow into the country, her 
resources for its employment would become known, the facilities for 
every kind of commerce which her ports afforded would ensure a 
flow of wealth to English capitalists — the only persons who can 
take advantage of them — an advantage which they were deterred 
from seeking by the present unsettled state of the country. See 
what sources of annoj^ance, of war and bloodshed AYales and Scot- 
land were, until they were incorporated in one government with 
England, and until their inhabitants were fully admitted to all the 
advantages of the constitution as British subjects, while they now 
contribute much to the strength of the empire. Why should not 
the same attempt be made with respect to Ireland? Is she to be 
forever excluded from the full benefits of the constitution ? Before 
I conclude, I beg to notice a paper which had within these four days 
been circulated with great assiduity by the enemies of emancipation. 
One of those papers I now hold in my hand. It called on all friends 
of the Protestant religion to read some extracts which it contained 
from the Journal des Debats, and to pause Ijefore they gave any 



DANIEL O CONNELL. 043 

support to the prayer of the Catholics. I will briefly state the 
nature of the case meutioned in the extracts, in order to show the 
gross injustice of founding upon it any charge against the Catholics. 
In the department of Aisne, an application was made by some Prot- 
estants for the erection of a Protestant church and the appointment 
of a minister of their religion to officiate in it. Now by the law of 
France the government is obliged in any place where there are five 
hundred Protestants residing, to erect a church for them, and to 
provide a minister to officiate in it. That clergyman was paid one 
hundred pounds a year, while a Catholic curate officiating for a sim- 
ilar number of Catholics, received only eighty pounds a year. The 
reason was that a Protestant clergyman might have a wife to main- 
tain, while a Catholic had not. The application was refused, not 
because it was intended to discourage the Protestant religion, but 
because the number of Protestants making application did not 
amount to one-luilf the number for which the law authorized the 
building of a church — and this was the gross instance of religious 
oppression of which such loud complaints were heard in this coun- 
try ! What would have been said if there were three hundred 
Protestants li\ing in one parish and onlj^ one Catholic, and that 
those three hundred were not only obliged to provide a place of 
worship for themselves, but also to build, at their entire expense, 
a church for the use of one Catholic ? AVould not all England ring 
with outcries against the injustice of the act ? And yet an act of 
this description, with the exception that the parties were placed in 
situations the reverse of what he had described, had just occurred 
in Ireland. 

A petition was a short time ago presented to the House of Com- 
mons, from three hundred Catholic inhabitants of a parish in Ire- 
land, the name of which would sound very harsh in English ears, 
and which could with difficulty be pronounced by English lips, the 
parish of Aghado. The petitioners stated that they were the only 
inhabitants of the parish except one, and that one was a Protestant ; 
that there was no Protestant church in the parish, but that the Prot- 
estant inhabitant had the use of a pew in a neighboring parish church, 
and they complained of being called upon to bear the expense of 
building a church for that one Protestant. "What, he repeated, would 
h;ive been said if the petitioners happened to be Protestants, and the 



644 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

one inhabitant a Catholic? But because they were Catholics, it was 
passed over as a matter of course, and not a word was heax-d about 
the oppi'cssion of the case. 

Another subject on which a great outcry has been raised, was 
lately started in a French journal, the " Constitutionnel." It 
appeared that a chui'ch at Nerac had been in possession of a Pro- 
testant congregation since 1804. This church had originally belonged 
to the Convent of St. Clare. In the French revolution, when the 
axe and the guillotine were in daily use against the ministers and 
professors of religion, the nuns were turned out upon the world, and 
the convent church was used as a storehouse. In this situatioti it 
continued until 1804, when it was given to a Protestant congregation, 
with no other title of gift or purchase than the mere proces verbal 
which assented to the application which had been made for it. Not 
loug back the Convent of St. Clare was restored, and not unnatu- 
rally, the nuns applied for the church which had originally belonged 
to them. A regular legal proceeding was commenced for its recov- 
ery, and the members of the Protestant congregation, not being able 
to prove a good title, were obliged to give it up. For this, however, 
the " Times " and " Chronicle," and other liberal journals, were quite 
enraged ; their very types seemed to fly about in a passion. But 
what was there in the case to call for such angry comment? 

It was said that the cure of Nerac made use of some very illiberal 
expressions on the occasion of regaining possession; if he did, there 
was no man connected with the " Times " or " Chronicle " Avho would 
more readily condemn any such expression than he would. Let it, 
however, be recollected , that the charge made was the charge of an 
enemy. It was made by a party of the old Jacobin school — of 
those whose friends had succeeded in overthrowing the altar of 
France for a time, and now, Avhen i-eligion was restored, would wish 
to hold up its ministers to contempt or reproach. I think the charge, 
coming from such a quarter, ought not to be entitled to au}^ more 
weight than an idle calumny which might be found against himself 
in the John Bull of this town. 

Suppose during the power of Cromwell — that scriptural Chris- 
tian, with texts in his mouth and sword in his hand — suppose that 
rough commander were to have bestowed a Protestant ciiurch on a 
Catholic congregation, or on any of the various sects of Christians 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 645 

(I speak without disrespect of any) which swarmed through the land 
in his day, and suppose, on the restoration, it was to be claimed, 
and a legal process instituted for its recovery, would the decision of 
that claim, in favov of the original owners, be a proof of bigotry or 
oppression in the Church of England ? Why then should that be 
called bigotry in one case, which would be an act of justice in the 
other? Talk of bigotry in France from Catholics to Protestants! 
In that country both were alike eligilile to places of trust and power 
in the state ; but whoever heard in any of their public assemblies — 
in the Chamber of Deputies — of u Lethbridge or an Tnglis getting 
up in his place and reviling with coarse epithets the religion of his 
Protestant fellow-subjects? (By the way, I intended to make a few 
remarks on the Index Expurgatorius of Sir H. Inglis, but I forgive 
him.) To those who talked of Catholic bigotry, I would say, let the 
Catholics of this country be placed on the same terms of equality 
with their Protestant brethren, as the Protestants of France are, with 
respect to their Catholic fellow-subjects, and I would rest perfectly 
satisfied. 

I fear I have trespassed too long on the patience of the meeting, 
but there were one or two points more on which I would say a word. 
The bill which the Lords had rejected was accompanied part of the 
way in the other House, with two measures called its wings. Those 
measures were condemned b\' some who were friendly to the great 
question ; but the Catholics of Ireland were not the authors of those 
measures ; they were no party to their origin. Of that bill, which 
went to make a provision for the Catholic clergy, I would say, 
that the clergy desired no such provision. They are content to 
serve their flocks for the humble pittance which they now 
receive. The rewards to which they looked for their inces- 
sant and valuable labors, are — let every hair of the Bishop of 
Chester's wig stand on end at hearing it — not of this but of another 
world. It is not the Catholics who desire those measures. They 
are sought for by the Pi'otestants, who look upon them as some 
sort of security ; and the Catholics are disposed to make some sacri- 
fice to honest prejudices, by acceding to that which they did not 
approve. It was this feeling which produced those measures, and 
brovight on that ridiculous scene of one of his Majesty's ministers 
strongl}' objecting to the " wings," while another was eagerly flap- 
ping them on, until, like the tomb of Mahomet, the Catholic bill 



64G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

hung suspended between the two counteracting influences. As to 
the second bill, respecting the forty shilling freeholders, it is one 
■which I cannot approve. I am too much of a reformer, and of that 
class called "radical," to wish for any such alteration. I did assent 
to it only because it was considered that Protestants desired it. I 
would much i-athcr have emancipation without it. They are now, 
however, gone by, and I hope they will never again make their ap- 
pearance — certain it is, I shall never wish for them, unless they are 
earnestly desired by the Protestants. 

I now, my lord Duke, take my leave ; I fear I have exhausted the 
patience of this meeting. I am grateful for the attention with which 
I have been heard ; I have spoken under feelings, j^erhaps, of some 
irritation — certainly under those of deep disappointment. A crowd 
of thoughts have rushed upon me, and I have given utterance to 
them as they arose, without allowing my judgment a pause as to 
which I should select and which restrain. I now go back to my own 
country, where I expect to find a feverish restlessness at having in- 
sult added to our injuries. Our enemies — perhaps I ought to say 
opponents — have otfered this insult; they have barbed with dis- 
grace, the dart of death. It will be impossible not to expect a 
degree of soreness at the way in which our claims have been met — 
at this additional insult. It is impossible not to feel disappointed at 
the manner in which we have seen Lord Liverpool truckle to the 
nonsense about the coronation oath [some person here said No, no]. 
I repeat it, he did ; and my conviction is that all we heard reported 
of him in the newspapers was dictated from that quarter. We shall 
now return to Ireland, and there advise our countrymen to be pa- 
tient — to bear the further delay of justice with calmness, but not 
to relax their fair, open, and legitimate efforts in again seeking for 
their rights. They have put down one association ; I promise to 
treat them to another. They shall trench further on your lib- 
erties — they shall dive deeper into the vitals of the constitution 
before they drive us from our purpose. We shall go on, but it will 
be without auger or turbulence. In that steady course we will con- 
tinue to use all legitimate means to accomplish our object, until 
English good sense shall overcome bigotry in high stations — shall 
put down intolerance in persons great in office — until the minister 
bo driven back to the half honesty which he before j^ossessed, or to 
that retirement which he rigidly deserves. 




O'CONNELL REFUSING TO TAKE THE OATH. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 647 



Speech on the Treaty of Limerick, 1826. 



On submitting to the Catholic Association, in 1826, the draft of a petition to 
(parliament, asking that the provisions of the Treaty of Limerick be carried into 
■effect, Mr. O'Connell spoke as follows : 

|kI^HE question is narrowed to a single point, and to any one 
■^im reviewinof the facts \vl 



phich history presented, it was impos- 

fsible to deny that the treaty has been foully and flagitiously 
violated. The penal code was a violation of it, and while a 
particle of that code remains, so long the solemn compact entered 
into between the English government and the Irish people is a dis- 
graceful monument of British perfidy. That treaty was a solemn, 
deliberate and authorized agreement. It was signed by bishops and 
commanders, and it was signed by Ginkle, who had the command 
of his government to give even better terms than it insured, and to 
make peace on any conditions, no matter how favorable to the people 
of Limerick, and of course to the whole people of Ireland. Who 
is it, who looks at history, that can be surprised that the wish to 
eflfect a peace should exist on the part of the English? At the time 
•of the war England was split into parties and dissensions. William 
had the adherence of the Whigs to his cause, but the Tories, who 
were the more numerous, though not so powerful, were arrayed 
against him. The Tories were like the cowardly Orange faction of 
the present day ; they were mean and dastardly, and took especial 
care to keep themselves from every enterprise in which their per- 
sons would be endangered. The Scotch highhuiders, a brave, hardy, 
and chivalrous race, who were Catholics, were devoted to the house 
of Stuart, and so were those of the lowlands too. The Calviuists 
of that country were in the same situation with the Irish of the 
present day ; their consciences were oppressed — their religious 
liberty was restricted. They fought however in the field for their 



Q^Q TREASURY OF ELOQUENiE. 

religion. Their efforts, tilthough courageous and adventurous, were 
not suited to the meelv spirit of Christianity. I would not fight for 
religion, because religion does not inculcate nor sanction such an 
act ; but for my civil rights, I trust in God, there is no man who 
has a more sincere regard for their value, or who would make 
greater sacrifices and efforts for their defence. In England there 
were many enemies against William, and his situation was precari- 
ous. In Ireland his prospects were bad and discouraging : the Irish 
forces, though in part unsuccessful, were not discomfited, and they 
were learning those rules of discipline, without which an army is no 
more than a mob. The battle of the Boj'ne was lost not by the in- 
feriority of the Irish forces, but by the paltry, pitiful cowardice of 
James. He only appeared once in the battle on that day. He 
made only one appeal, and that was when the soldiery of England 
were being cut down by the trooj^s of Ireland under Hamilton — then 
he exclaimed, "O spare my English subjects?" Like another Duke 
of York he took up his position in the rear, and the races of the 
Helder had a glorious prototype in the races of the Boyne. "Change 
generals," exclaimed the gallant Eegan, in the evening when the bat- 
tle was done, "Change generals, and we will fight the battle over 
again ! " Three thousand were wounded in that battle and but three 
hundred were taken prisoners ! How illustrative of the humanity 
of the conquerors ! Still Clare was open, and its batteries were in 
possession of the Irish. The fortifications of Limerick were yet at 
their command — French succors were daily expected — the war 
between England and France was already declared — and with such 
opposition, were it not for the treaty of Limerick, William would 
have been driven back into Holland, if even there he would have 
found a refuge from the French. The winter was fast approaching. 
His armies consisted of some Dutch and some Brandenlnirg troops, 
and some that were called Irish on whom no reliance was placed r 
they were the Enniskillen and Londonderry regiments. Oh ! what 
regiments these were ! Schomberg, in speaking of them, was only 
puzzled to decide which of the two regiments was more thievish, 
because both the regiments were much less remarkable for their 
valor than for their propensity to rob and steal. Their officers were 
peasants — plebeians who had advanced themselves by their base- 
ness, and like the Orangemen of the present time, they were for- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. (J4 > 

midable only to an unarmed people. It was not unlikely tbat ?.i-. 
Dawson was the descendant of one of these peasants. The pleasure 
he felt in reverting to those times might probably be thus accounted 
for. This Mr. Dawson, who, if he were not a clerk in office, would 
not be worthy of contradiction, asserts many extraordinary things 
respecting this country. He felt no interest in preserving its char- 
acter, because, like his brother Orangemen, he was not indiirenous 
to the soil. They must certainly be exotics, for if half their venom 
was natural, the influence of St. Patrick would be efiectual in ban- 
ishing the reptiles from among us. But the reptile still lives, and 
here are its hisses. 

Mr. O'Connell here took up a printed report of Mr. Dawson's speech. 

Mr. Dawson tells us that the history of Ireland is a mere waste — 
not a spot in it to vary the dismal scene but Londonderry, that fur- 
nished the robbers to Marshal Schomberg, "Let us trace," says he, 
"its dark and bloody progress. When a foreign foe invaded, it 
shrunk at the foot of an insignificant couquerer." And this is what 
Mr. Dawson said of a country to which he boasts of belonging. Let 
me tell him this country was never beat. It was by Irishmen she 
was always ruined. Their treachery and disunion were the cause 
of her defeat. Four-fifths of the Irish troops joined the Cromwel- 
lian invaders under Dermot, and it was to their desertion, and not 
to the superior arms of her enemies, that her conquest was attribut- 
able. Mr. Dawson proceeded — "continued insurrection, intestine 
wars, bloody massacres, treacherous treaties." Treacherous trea- 
ties 1 Come forward, Mr. Dawson, with your native host of Orange- 
men, and prove infraction of one single treaty on the part of the 
Irish. I ask but one. But he takes care to make the charge gene- 
ral. Oh ! that is the way in which libels and malignant imputations 
are uttered and circulated ; for he knows he cannot substantiate it. 
" Verscdin- in generalibus." Oh ! how fatally true the Irish were to- 
their treaties may be read in that of Limerick. The treaty was 
signed before communication was had to the other part of the army, 
which were, Mr. Chairman, under the command of an ancestor of 
your own. Before it was completed, the French fleet with men and 
arms arrived at Dingle. Some i\rgued that the treaty was not bind- 
ing — that it had been agreed upon only in the South. What was 



()50 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the reply? "We know we are not bound by the treaty, but Irish 
honor is pledged, and never shall we stain it." And well did they 
observe it. They dismissed the French troops — they admitted their 
enemies. They relied on English faith and Orange honor, and 
the consequence, the natural consequence, Avas that they were duped. 
But I turn on Mr. Dawson and say to him — you accuse us of violat- 
ing treaties, if you cannot show me one you are a slanderer. And I 
turn on him again and say— shoAV me one solitary treaty that England 
has ever performed towards us, and I will forgive her all the rest. 
No, sir, from the time the first footstep of the Saxon polluted our 
land, down to the last, and not least flagrant breach of faith at the 
execrable Union, I defy him to show me one compact between Eng- 
land and this country, that has not been treacherously and basely 
broken. The description of a treaty with the Irish, given by Clar- 
endon, shows that the intention, at the moment of entering into 
them, was to delude and betray us. Next, Mr. Dawson says: "A 
systematic combination against the introduction of the arts and 
blessings of peace are (with those qualities he before stated) to be 
found in mournful succession throughout the lapse of centuries." 
Really, this is very, very heartrending. They first take away our 
possessions, our rights, our wealth, and every incentive to labor and 
industry, and then one of that very faithless and base ci'ew who be- 
trayed us, an underling of a minister, is sent to thwart and irritate 
-us — to charge us Avith the effects of their own perfidy, and to re- 
mind us of the blessings we have lost by being the victims of their 
diabolical deceit. 

" During five or six centuries," says Mr. Dawson, " the history of 
Ii'cland presents not one single fact to claim the admiration or even 
the respect of posterity." The blundering bigot then, with a classic 
affectation, asks : "Where can we look for one green spot to cheer 
us in our gloomy pilgrimage ? " Oh, hear this Orange bigot asking 
for a green spot ! I was reading at the very time I received the 
newspaper with Mr. Dawson's speech, a passage in a Avork which 
has been ever and is still looked up to as a high authority on the 
subject of which it treats. It is an account of the injuries and mas- 
sacres of the Irish in 1641, by Dr. Curry, and there the occurrence 
to which I allude is to be found. Many, innumerable instances 
■could be drawn from tlie historians of the times in Avhich Mr. Daw- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 651 

son's ignorance delights to revel, not of one fact, but of hundreds 
of facts, calculated to elevate the character of the Catholics of Ire- 
laud. Speaking of the county of Mayo, the historian says: "In 
this county few murders were committed by either side, though the 
libel saith, that about two hundred and fifty Protestants were mur- 
dered, whereof at Belluke two hundred and twenty ; whei'eas not 
one person was murdered there, which the now Lady of Montrath can 
witness ; her ladyship and Sir Robert Hanna, her father, with many 
others, being retreated thither for security, were all conveyed safe 
to Manor Hamilton. And it is observable that the said lady and the 
rest came to Mr. Owen O'Rorcke's, who kept a garrison at Druma- 
heir, for the Irish, before they came to Manor Hamilton, whose 
brother was prisoner with Sir Frederick Hamilton. And the said 
Mr. O'Rorcke, having so many persons of quality in his hands, sent 
to Sir Frederick to enlarge his brother, and that he would convey 
them all safe to him. But Sir Frederick, instead of enlarging his 
brother, hanged lum the next day, which might have well provoked 
the gentleman to revenge, if he had not more humanity than could 
be well expected upon such occasions, and in times of so great con- 
fusion; yet he sent them all safe when they desired." Yes, he sent 
them all safe when they desired. He did what he ought to do, har- 
rowed as his heart must have been at the atrocious outrage that had 
been committed by his rash and ferocious enemy. He did what an 
Irish gentleman did do, and does do — he spurned at cruelty. He 
was not goaded, even by the example set him, into an imitation of 
barbarity. His honor stifled his sense of injurj'. I will give that 
fact to Mr. Dawson, and let him make the most of it, in classic ful- 
minations against the Catholics of Ireland. Let Mr. Dawson read 
this fact, and if ho persist in aspersing his native land after the peni- 
sal of it — if he should then impugn the chivalrous generosity — 
the humanity — the virtues of Ireland, I will only say, that if Ire- 
land has produced generous hearts and dispositions, she has also 
produced monsters and anomalies, M'hich have turned what was 
intended to be one of the gardens of the world into the pitiful 
pelting province that she is at this moment ! 

Mr. Dawson had said that the object of James H. was to establish 
the Catholic religion both in England and Ireland, and with it 
unlimited despotism. This was a false assertion ; he did no more 



(552 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

than to prDclaim toleration, and this was enough for the Dawsons of 
the day to expel him from the throne. The prosecution of the seven 
bishops I now condemn, and if I had lived in the day of the occur- 
rence I would have condemned it then. Mr. Dawson says, that in 
order to effect the purpose of establishing an unlimited despotism in 
Ireland, James proceeded to remodel the civil establishments, and 
he accordingly displaced every Protestant who held an office in the 
administration of justice, and filled up the place of chancellor, chief 
judges, puisne judges, privy councellors, sheriffs, magistrates, and 
even constables, with Catholics. Talking of constables reminds me 
of the Dublin corporation ; that immaculate body once petitioned for 
the removal of Mulvaney, the scavenger, from his functions, because 
he was, contrary to law, a Papist ! Oh, what a relentless spirit I 
They would not allow a Papist to fill even the dirtiest office of the 
state. It is asserted by Mr. Dawson, that all the judges appointed 
by James were intolerant. This is false ; James nominated only 
three judges — Nugent, Lord Eiverston, Sir Stephen Rice, and Dal3\ 
Would to God all Judge Dalj^s were like him. He never raised 
himself to the bench by destroying the interests of his country. He 
never devoted his leisure hours to calumniating his wretched, ragged 
countrymen ! All three individuals nominated by James to the 
bench, were remarkable for their purity and pei'fection. They are 
quoted by Protestant writers as the models of judicial knowledge and 
purity. It was related of Eice that he gambled his property, and 
this was the only blemish that ever sullied his reputation. They 
lived in troubled times and they survived them. They did not fly, 
as they would have done if they had been guilty of a crime or a 
dereliction of duty. They lived honored and respected, and they 
descended to their graves without taint or reproach, having served 
their King well, and I trust having served their God better. Oh ! 
it is only Orange bigotry that could ransack the very graves to find 
matei'ials of insult ; but in this instance, as in every other, it has 
failed, and I defy it to the proof. Mr. Dawson had alleged it as a 
charge, that it was enacted by James that three fellows of the 
University were prohiljited from meeting together. Even if it were 
so, how did the enactment differ from the enactments usual in all 
cases of civil commotion. What was this act intended to prevent but 
a Protestant insurrection? Flagrante belln, it is provided that there 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 653 

shall be no meetiugs of persons who might conspire lo cause a public 
tumult, and this which is now practised — nay, which is carried to 
an unparalleled extent in Ireland under the present government, is 
charged as a crime upon James. But it should not be forgotten that 
by the repeal of that act of settlement, the monarch himself was a 
sufferer to an immense amount. The passing of that act, however, 
might not be justified, but decidedly any act that would tend to 
subvert it would be unjust. Transfers and conveyances had been 
made to such an extent, that it would be an unjustifiable crime to 
disturb them. I have been accused of recommending the repeal of 
the act of settlement, and I dare say I will now be accused of 
recommending it. But as a proof of my sincerity in defending it, I 
■will say that if that act wei'e annulled I would be comparatively a 
beggar. My property hangs upon its continuance. The property 
of my two brothers, who are both indeijendent, hangs upon the same 
title. What then have I to gain by a change? Mr. Dawson had 
complained of the attainder of two thousand six hundred Protestants 
by James. But what was there in that, worthy of reprobation. 
Those attainted men had tied the country ; they were told that if 
they did not come back witiiin a certain period they would be 
attainted. They did not return and they were attainted. Why 
should they not ? They were attainted because they were enemies 
of the King ; and if they were not enemies of the King, they were 
Ijase cowards, for they ran away when their country needed their 
assistance in its cause. In Athens it was the law that every man 
who was neutral was criminal — "He who is not for us is against 
us." And shall it be said that those who fled from their country 
when she needed their energies on her behalf, were not deserving of 
obloquy and punishment ? 

Mr. Dawson had said that the parliament of James was Catholic. 
I admit the fact. But let Mr. Dawson sho\v me any act of their 
doing that can shake their purity and honesty ! Let him show me 
an act even proposed for the purpose of oppressing the consciences 
of Protestants ! No, the parliament of that day sat in friendship 
with a few Protestants, and their Bill of Rights was more extensive 
even than that of England. Even after the excesses and cruelties 
that had been committed against the Catholics, when they were 
■deprived of power, and when they regained it, was there a system of 



G54 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

blood and cruelty on their part, although they had the dominion if 
they used it? Under Mary the Catholics of Ireland were not perse- 
cutors, and again under James they wielded their power in mercy 
and toleration. They forgot the persecutions which their body 
endured under Elizabeth, and they only bore in recollection the 
character of their religion, which taught them to give charity and 
good-will for persecution and cruelty. Mr. Dawson had said that 
King James had taken away their churches from tlae Protestants. 
This assertion, as well as the other assertion, made by that profound 
statesman, was false. This statement was derived from the pure 
pages of Archbishop King's work. The cathedral of Christ's Church 
in Dublin was the Kang's chapel, and it was in that case alone that 
James exercised his authority, and in dispossessing the holders of 
that cathedral he acted under his royal right and was not influenced 
by his religious feelings. The contrary was the fact with regard to 
Wexford. In that county the Catholic soldiery had taken possess- 
ion of a Protestant church, and when James heard the circumstan- 
ces he ejected the soldiery and restored the church to its owners. 
Doctor Leslie, a learned divine of the Protestant Church, had chal- 
lenged the accuracy of Iving's book, and had denounced and refuted 
it, and now, after such a lapse of years, Mr. Peel sends out his 
inidei-ling, Mr. Dawson, his clerk, to repeat the calumnies. Who 
was this King? He was a vile parasite of James. He was the 
ecclesiastic who prayed from his pulpit, that God might blast him 
if he ever preached any other doctrine than passive obedience, and 
at another time, that God might blast and destroy William and his 
consort, if they had an}' intention of invading this country ! He — 
he is the vile toad-eater, who has denounced the monarch whose feet 
he kissed? DojDping, who preached up that there was no faith to be 
kept with the Catholics of Limerick, was the first to present an 
address to King James on his landing. What an exquisite pair of de- 
fendei's of the violation of the treaty of Limerick ! What immaculate 
authority for Mr. Dawson to quote from ! Is it to be endured that 
Peel, who knows nothing of the history of these times, or the history 
of our country, is to send out one of his clerks to blow up, with his 
pestiferous breath, the embers of those unholy fires of bigotry 
which had been nearly extinguished by the superincumbent influence 
of liberality and good fellowship, and to excite, by his evil agency. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 655 

the inflammable materials of Irish society? Before I conclude, I 
will read an extract from a work written by Mr. Storey, a chaplain 
in the army of King William, who is a tolerably good authority 
on the bravery of the Irish ti'oops, which Mr. Dawson has re- 
pudiated : 

Wednesday, 24th. — A breach being made near St. Jolm's Gate, over the Black 
Battery, that was about twelve yards long, and pretty flat, as it appeared to us, the 
King gave orders that the counterscarp should be attacked that afternoon, to which 
purpose a great many woolsacks were carried down, and good store of ammunition, 
with other things suitable for such work. All the grenadiers in the army were 
ordered to march down into the trenches, which they did. Those, being about five 
hundred, were commanded, each company, by their respective captains, and were to 
make the first attack, being supported by one battalion of the Blue Dutch on the 
right, then Lieutenant Douglass's regiment. Brigadier Stuart's, my Lord Mcath's^ 
and my Lord Lisljurn's, as also a Brandenburg regiment. These were all posted 
towards the breach, upon the left of whom were Col. Cutts and the Danes. Lieutenant 
General Douglass commanded, and their orders were to possess themselves of the 
counterscarp and maintain it. We had also a body of horse drawn up to succor the 
foot upon occasion. About half an hour after three, the signal being given by firing 
three pieces of cannon, the grenadiers, being in the furthest angle of our trenches, 
leaped over and ran towards the counterscarp, firing their pieces and throwing tlieir 
grenades. This gave the alarm to the Irish, who had their guns all ready, and dis- 
charged great and small shot upon us, as fast as 'twas possible. Our men were not 
behind them in either, so that in less than two minutes, the noise was so terrible 
that one would liave thought the very S'kies were ready to rend in sunder. This 
was seconded by dust, smoke and all the terrors that the art of man could iuvent to 
ruin and undo one another; aud to make it the more uneasy, the day itself w.is 
excessively hot to the bystanders, and much more sore, in all respects, to those upon 
action. Captain Carlisle, of my Lord Drogheda's regiment, ran in with his gren.a- 
diers to the counterscarp, and though he received two wounds between that and the 
trenches, yet he went forward and commanded his men to throw in the grenades, 
but in the leaping into the dry ditch below the counterscarp, an Irishman below 
shot him dead. Lieutenant Buxton, however, encouraged the men, and they got 
upon the counterscarp, and all the rest of the grenadiers were as ready as they. By 
this time the Irishmen were throwing down their arms and running as fast as they 
could into town, which, our men perceiving, entered the breach, pell-mell, with 
them, and half the Earl of Drogheda's grenadiers aud some others were actually In 
town. The regiments that were to second the grenadiers went to the counterscarp, 
and, having no order to proceed, they stopt." [I engage they did, they stopt sure 
enough.] " The Irishmen were all running from the walls, and quite over the 
bridge into the English town; but seeing but a few of our men enter, they were 
with much ado persuaded to rally, and those that were in seeing themselves not 
followed, and their amunitiou being spent, they designed to retreat, but some were 
shot, some taken, and the rest came out again, but very few without being wounded. 
The Irish then ventnred upon the breach again, and from the walls and every place 
so pestered us upon the counterscarp, that, after nigh three hours resisting bullets, 
stones, broken bottles, from the very women, who boldly stood in the breach, and 
were nearer our men than their own " 



656 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

And here I will pay a tribute to the heroic virtues of these women, 
who thus sacrificed themselves for their country's honor. An officer 
of the Irish army was wounded. The instance is one of singular 
interest, arising from female courage and presence of mind. He was 
wounded, and was flying into his own house, and was puTsued by an 
enemy. He had gained his door, and his wife, from a window in 
the house, was a witness of his efforts to escape from his relentless 
pursuer. The window-stone was loose, and it was a ready instru- 
ment for her purpose. Her husband was nearly a victim to the 
revenge of his foe, who had just stepped upon the threshold, when 
the impulse of the mind of the fond and courageous woman gave a 
strength and energy to her efforts ; she hurled the stone upon the 
ruffian's head, and he bit the dust. Oh, what splendid devotion to 
country ! Would there have been an Irish heart among the Irish if 
they did not beat out their invaders, stimulated, as they were, by 
such heart-cheering examples. 

Mr. O'Connell resumed the reading. 

..." whatever ways could be thought on to destroy us, our ammunition being 
spent, it was judged safest to return to our trenches. When the worii was at the 
hottest, the Brandenburg regiment, who behaved themselves very well, had got 
upon the Black Battery, when the enemy's powder happened to take fire, and blew 
up a great many of them, the men, fagots, and stones, and what not, flying into the 
air with a most terrible noise. Colonel Cutts was commanded by the Duke of Wur- 
temburg to march tovvarda the spur at the south gate and beat in the Irish 
that appeared there, which he did, though he lost several of his men and was him- 
self wounded; he went within half musket shot of the gate, and all his men were 
open to the enemy's fire, who lay secure within the walls. The Danes were not idle 
all the while, but flred upon the enemy with all imaginable fury, and had several 
killed, but the mischief was, we had but one breach, and all towards the left, it was 
impossible to get into the town when the gates were shut if there had been no enemy 
to oppose us, without a great many scaling ladders, which we had not. From half 
an hour after three till after seven there was one continued flre of grape and small 
shot without any intermission; insomuch that the smoke that went from the town 
reached in one continued cloud to the top of a mountain at least six miles off. 
When our men drew off, some were brought up dead and some without a leg ; others 
wanted arms, and some were blind with powder; especially a great many of the i)oor 
Brandenburghers looked like furies, with the misfortune of gunpowder. One Mr. 
Upton, getting in amongst the Irish in town, and seeing no way to escape, went in 
the crowd undiscovered till he came at the Goveruor, and then surrendered himself. 
There was a captain, one Bedloe, who deserted the enemy the day before, and now 
went upon the breach ami fought bravely on our side, for which his Majesty gave 
him a company. The Sing stood nigh Cromwell's fort all the time, and the busi- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 657 

ness being over, lie went to his camp very much concerned, as indeed was the whole 
army ; for you might have seen a mixture of anger and sorrow in everybody's coun- 
tenance. The Irish had two small field pieces planted in the King's Island, which 
flanked their own counterscarp, and in our attack did us no small damage, as did 
also two guns more that they had planted within the town, opposite the breach, 
and charged with cartridge shot. We lost at least live hundred upon the spot, and 
had a thousand more wounded, as I understand by the surgeons of our hospitals, 
who are the properest judges. The Irish lost a great many by cannou and other 
ways ; but it cannot be supposed that their loss should be equal to ours, since it is 
a much easier thing to defend walls than 'tis by main strength to force people from 
them ; and one man within has the advantage of four without." 

[Here followed a list of oflicers killed and wounded, needless to be recounted.] 

Are we after this to be told by Duwson that our countrymen wore 
not brave, and would not succeed if they had held out? In a base 
violation of the treaty, M^hich had been signed before the walls of 
Limerick, the privileges and immunities promised were denied ; the 
treaty was broken ; it stands a record of British perGdy ! Our 
ancestoi-s, sir, for I, too, may say that blood runs even in my veins 
from those who fought before Limerick, are denied their rights ! 
Your noble brother, degraded from his natural rank, is unrepre- 
sented and unrepresenting. He neither has a vote in the election of 
his own order, nor the voice of a Forty-shilling Freeholder in re- 
turning a member to the Commons' House of P.nrliament. Where 
is the liberty the Catholics enjoyed under Charles I., which was 
secured to them by the treaty of Limerick ? Tell me that, Mr. 
Dawson. Tell me that, Orange faction. Let Mr. Peel bring his 
borough members, who come in when the division bell is rung, to 
assert facts contrary to reason and religion against us ; but let them 
not insult us by saying that the treaty of Limerick has not been 
foully violated. 

There is another trait of Mr. Dawson's hypocrisy that is worth 
mentioning. After my examination before the Parliamentary Com- 
mittee, Mr. Dawson came up to me and told me, in the weakness of 
his heart, that my evidence had removed many prejudices from him, 
and that his opinions on many subjects Avere altered. I rejoiced at 
the declaration, and I respected him for making it at the time. I 
mentioned in public the fact, and stated that Mr. Dawson had shaken 
hands with me in the interview, and this part of the relation it was 
deemed necessary to contradict in the Dublin Evening Mail. I do 



058 TREASUEY OF ELOQUI'^NCE. 

not know whether he shook hands with me or not. I hojie now he 
did not. I would shrink from any contact with a man who could 
make such a declaration to me as he did, and since falsify it by his 
acts. 

I have done. I have shown that the treaty of Limerick was foully 
violated. I arraign those who perpetuate the violation by their 
hostility to us and to our cause. I arraign their bigotry in the face 
of the world ; and I demand, in the name of humanity and justice 
and faith, that at least the terms of the compact should be fulfilled. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 659^ 



Speech at the Second Clare Election, 



Mr. O'Coitneli, arose and placed his hand several times upon his breast during 
the acclamations, evidently under the influence of powerful emotions. 

^i ACCEPT the trust, not with any presumptuous confidence in 
P^ my own abilities, but simply with an honesty of intuition and 
'i^^ purity of motive. We have procured Emnncipation, from the 
i, moral condition of the people, from that high enlightenment 
they had acquired from their submission, their obedience to the 
laws, from their respect to the mauy ordinances of man and laws of 
God. 

It was impossible that that measure could be any longer withheld 
— but I complain of the results of that measure; I complain that 
since it hns passed, four months have now elapsed and there has not 
been an effort employed on the part of the government, nor any dis- 
position manifested to do away with the distinctions Avhich then 
existed and which still continue to exist in the country. No, they 
are still kept alive as much as ever, and up to the period at wliich I 
now speak, there does not appear a single Catholic who has derived 
the least benefit from the meiisure. In speaking of your having 
elected me now, I shall still point out to you — I feel it my duty to 
do so — the injustice which has been done to you and me when the 
last election was made the subject of discussion in the House, and I 
must say that it had anything but my respect or submission upon 
that occasion. I heard the insolent opinion of the speaker pro- 
nounced, and, though I am well aware of the little and contemptible 
motives by which he was actuated ; although I am well aware that 
they are of that description which the character of the sex from 
which they emanated should consign to silence, I shall not say any- 
thing more about them now, but the time shall come when with your 
voice I will bring this matter forth. Upon that occasion, too, I 



660 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

have to complain of the conduct of a, certain profession, a profession 
to which I once considered it an honor to belong. I allude to the 
profession of the bar. 

The bar, in my opinion, have disgraced themselves in the discus- 
sion of my case before the House of Commons. I put forward, upon 
that occasion, my opinions as to my right to sit and vote. I proved 
my right to sit and vote by the existing law. There was not one 
who came forward either by pamphlet or letter to contradict my 
statement. If they had done so in print, I would immediately have 
annihilated them. ]\Ir. Sugden committed one of the most egregious 
errors that ever a lawyer of any country was guilty of upon that 
occasion. Mr. Tyndal waited, and in a dry, hum-drum form of a 
speech in parliament, opposed me. It was a poor, miserable attempt 
at a speech, and this man has since become the Lord Chief Justice 
of England. That country is to be pitied that has such a judge. It 
is melancholy to reflect that elevation can be easily procured by 
abandonment of princijile. There was another who opposed me — 
Mr. Sugden — one who has lately made himself very reraarkal)le by 
some ridiculous oI)servation, but whose name has not been intro- 
duced to-day. He committed an egregious blunder, and I nailed it 
to him. The first who opposed me has since become a Chief Jus- 
tice, whilst another has been appointed his Majesty's Attorney Gen- 
eral for England. 

I cannot express the sentiments of abhorrence and contempt I 
entertain for the opinion pronounced by Sir James Scarlett. He 
was favorable in opinion to me, so much so that Mr. Hutchinson, 
the member for Mallow, and others, told me they were convinced 
by the reasonings of Sir James Scarlett ; yet this man afterwards 
voted against me. Thus I was put down by parliamentary magic 
and two lawyers, l)oth of whom are promoted, and one of whom 
advocated my cause at one period. I must, however, do justice to 
that portion of the profession who acted nobly, consistently, and 
honorably. I cannot be unmindful of the splendid aid of Henry 
Brougham, that man of unrivalled talent, who possesses more infor- 
mation than any other man I ever met. Oh, yes ; it gladdens my 
heart to reflect that I had such a man at my side, the brightest orna- 
ment in the British House of Commons, the statesman, the orator, 
the lawyer, the man of science, and the philosopher. There were 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. (56 X 

others, too, who supported me. I cannot omit the names of Dim- 
cannon, Ebrington, of Rice, of Lloyd. 

[Yes, and, said some individual, the Knight of Kerry.] 

Oh ; as to the Knight of Kerry, I hardly consider it a debt I owe 
him, to enumerate his distinguished name, one of the most honest 
men who ever entered into tiio House of Commons. There were 
also many who supported me. among the high families of England. 
The illustrious name of Grey can never be forgotten by me. I had 
his distinguished support. The decision, notwithstanding all, was 
against me. It was a decision in the face of the law. I told them 
so before the bar of the House — that there was an injustice done 
me, and an injustice in my person done to you. As far as I am con- 
cerned nothing shall prevent me tearing away the veil and showing 
the administration in all its naked deformity, for the purpose of 
saving the coiuitry for the King and the p^eople. I shall next allude 
to the destruction of the Catholic Association. It certainly reminds 
me — in truth it does, of the immortal Alexander, who " twice had 
slew the slain," — it was a most unnecessary measure, for the 
Association had previously performed a virtual suicide. It was 
frightful to consider the consequence of that act ; it is a despotic 
power put into the hands of the Viceroy, and I complain of it 
because it bears, without distinction, upon all classes. I shall not 
be one fortnight in the House until I call for its repeal. I shall 
demand, too, the repeal of that act which deprived the virtuous 
forty-shilling freeholders of their franchise — an act which robbed 
two hundred and fifty thousand of the elective franchise in one day. 

The disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders was a breach 
of the Union. It was the basis of the Union tiiat the country should 
be represented by the forty-shilling freeholders among the constitu- 
ency of the countiy, for the purpose of placing the representation of 
both kingdoms upon an equalization ; that equalization was now 
destroyed — the basis of the Union was therefore destroyed. ai;d 
the measure was grossly violated in this instance. Standing hei'e 
now, as I do, for the first time, the undisputed member of the 
county of Clare, I pledge myself to have those virtuous men reslored 
to their rights. As a favorable result of emancipation, and a dispo- 
sition to dispense justice, the IMinistry point, no doubt, to the late 



(362 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

proclamation for the dispersion of Orange assemblies. I will admit 
this, but I am at liberty to canvass this proclamation ; it came a 
■week just too late. I went, about a week before the fatal occur- 
rence which called it forth, to Lord Levison Gower, and told him 
my apprehensions ; I told him I feared, if some timely and salutary 
measures were not taken, that sixty individuals, at least, would foil 
victims to Orange butchery. In a week afterwards the proclama- 
tion is issued ; it reminds me of the familiar adage, that "he was a 
good servant who locked the stable door when the steed was stolen." 
His master had certainly good reason to congratulate himself on the 
services of such a servant. There was no proclamation as long as 
the people lay quiet, as long as they laid themselves down to the 
fury of the Orange gang, as long as the}' patiently submitted to the 
sword ; as long as all this continued there was no proclamation ; 
but when the battle of Mackeon took place, which was gallant and 
victorious to the Catholics, then the proclamation was issued. 

I shall now address j'ou on a subject more closely allied to your 
feelings, and I address you with pain, as'I have to allude to myself. 
What, I ask, can I do for Clare ? I will tell you what I can't do, I 
-cannot provide anyone among you with place, pension, or office. I 
•cannot meet the expectation of anyone in this way. I don't care 
what the administration may be, I shall always be like the shep- 
herd's dog, watching to mark where the rights and liberties of the 
people shall be infringed upon, to sound the alarm, to protect them 
from danger. The first object to w4iich my attention shall bo 
directed, is to hold out the olive branch of peace to all ; to reconcile 
the temporary separation between landlord and tenant ; to engender 
those kindly and affectionate feelings between those respective 
classes which ought forever to exist, and, if possible, ought never 
to have suffered estrangement or alienation. Upon the occasion of 
the last election, there were many and many who opposed me, who 
are now disposed to give me their support ; and there were many 
who were actuated in that opposition by the most honorable motives. 
There is Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, too, of whom I can scarcely speak 
in adequate terms of eulogy. I should be base, indeed, if I did not 
bestow upon him the commendations he deserves. The Catholics 
turned him out of the county, and the revenge which he practiced, 
was one of the best speeches I ever heard in their favor. It was one 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 663 

■of the greatest instances of generosity, which I ever befoi-e Avit- 
iiessed. I consider Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald one of the ablest men in 
the cabinet, and if he were not encumbered with a certain peculiarity 
approaching to diffidence in his own powers, frequently the com- 
panion of great merit, — he would be the first man in the cabinet. 
I shall now turn to mj^ public duties, and it may be asked, what are 
my qualifications ? I say it unafiectedly, I am no orator. I am a 
"plain, blunt man," who speaks the plain language. My forensic 
habits have given me a facility in delivering my sentiments as they 
occur to my mind, without humming, or having to look for a better 
word. I have no pretensions to poetry. The Muses have never 
hovered over me with their zephyr-airy wings, or carried me aloft 
on those wild and ethereal voyages of fancy which arc taken by her 
favorite votaries. I come, as I have said, to the House of Com- 
mons, a plain workingman, with honesty of intentions — a man of 
business. That man must be an early riser who is up before me ; 
and he must be a sober fellow who goes to bed with a more sober 
head than 1 do. When I go over to the House of Commons, it is 
my intention to be there from the moment that prayers begin until 
the moment that all the business is over. I will be the first in the 
House, and I shall be last out. I will read every bill, every word of it. 
I come now to what I consider my duties with regard to religion. If 
any question should come before tl e House on the subject of the dis- 
cipline of the Established Church, I shall immediately walk out. I shall 
leave Protestants to deal with what leads to their own spiritual con- 
cerns. I should wish the same for myself, and I will do as I would be 
done bj'. But with respect to the temporalities of the Established 
Church, that is totally another subject. I should wish to bring about a 
suitable equalization of church property, not that thousands of curates 
should hardly have the means of subsistence, while the bishops were 
rioting in luxury. The former have only £75 a year, while many of 
the bishops have twenty thousand ! The time is approaching when 
the system of tithes must be abolished. France is now comfortable 
in the abolition of its tithes. If no one will introduce the subject, I will 
introduce it myself. I know that I shall have more Protestants than 
any other class to join me in this measure. I shall endeavor to put 
an end to the perpetually returning litigation to which the Catholics 
and Dissenters are subject, by these primeval transfers of deeds, 



(3(34 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

which were a consuming gangrene to both Dissenters and Catholics 
in their public charities. I shall endeavor to pi'otect them by the 
law, free from litigation. I go into parliament for freedom for all 
men — Jew and Gentile, Heathen and Christian. I except, how- 
ever, the subjects of that abominable monopoly, the East India Com- 
pany, who still keep the abominations of the idol Juggernaut. I 
would leave those people to their superstitions, endeavoring to con- 
vince them by every reasonable argument, but I should neither sup- 
port' nor encourage them, nor support those who would do so either. 
I would place no limit to the freedom of the human mind. But I 
shall pass from these subjects to those of much more interest. 

Let me draw your attention to a system of oaths, a hoi'rible sys- 
tem of oaths. There are no less a number of oaths required to be 
taken in various departments than seventeen or eighteen hundred. 
There are a multitude of oaths in the excise, and I shall make it my 
business to call for a list of all the public oaths which are now 
required to be taken in vai'ious departments, for the purpose of hav- 
ing them abolished. I condemn the taking of oaths altogether. The 
next subject to which I shall call your attention is that of parliamen- 
tary reform. I consider that it is calculated to give security to 
jiroperty and safety to life. I claim, in a word, for the people at 
large a full and free representation. I profess myself a radical 
reformer. The voting should be by ballot, and carried on regularly 
in the parish in which each individual lived. I may be asked what 
are my sentiments respecting the duration of parliament. I will not 
quarrel much about that, but I am an advocate for full, free, and fre- 
quent parliaments. The parliament anterior to the year 1688 was 
triennial. For my part, in this particular, I must say I am much 
attached to biennial parliaments. From this subject, I shall now 
turn to that of the Repeal of the Union. I may be asked, shall I be 
able to etfect this. Who Avould be believed if, two years ago, he 
should have been hazardous enough to say, that this day I would 
stand the unquestioned representative of the County of Clare? I 
know that in seeking the Repeal of the Union,- 1 shall have the sup- 
port of the Coi'poratiou of Dublin, however opposed to me upon 
other subjects. 

I now come to that species of reform which is the object of my 
darling solicitude — the reform of law. The government should pay 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 665 

all the expenses ; there should be no hireling advocacy. Prosecutors 
never see one another until they are brought into court, and their 
case comes on in the shape of a record. In every case of litigation, 
the contending parties should previously see one another, the judge 
explain the laws, and I have no doubt that under those circumstances 
a mutual corapi'omise and arrangement would take place before the 
parties Avould leave the court. There is one subject more to which 
I shall advert. I am the respecter of authority. If calumny assail 
the Throne, then private life cannot be secure. I have read with 
horror some details of a distinguished individual in the Loudon news- 
papers. The story of Captain Garth, however, must come to light, 
and the Duke of Cumberland, I have no doubt, will be freed from 
the foul calumny with which he has been assailed. No — I shall not 
see the brother of my King attacked. I am norespecter of persons,, 
but I will call for and demand investigation into this transaction. 
There is a moral progress at present in the world. There is no truej 
basis for liberty but religion. 



(366 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Speech 

At Mullaghmast Monster Meeting. 

Septembee, 1843. 

f^yi ACCEPT, with the greatest alacritj^ the high honor you havo 
g^ done me in calling me to the chair of this majestic meeting. 
2i^ I feel more honored than I ever did in my life, with one single 
i exception, and that related to, if possible, an equally majestic 
meeting at Tara. But I must say that if a comparison were instituted 
between them, it would take a more discriminating eye than mine to 
discover any difference between them. There are the same incal- 
culable numl)ers ; there is the same firmness ; there is the same 
determination ; there is the same exhibition of love to old Ireland ; 
there is the same resolution not to violate the peace ; not to be guilty 
of the slightest outrage ; not to giye the enemy power by commit- 
ting a crime, but peacefully and manfully to stand together in the 
open day, to protest before man and in the presence of God against 
the iniquity of continuing the Union. 

At Tara, I protested against the Union — I repeat the protest at 
Mullaghmast. I declare solemnly my thorough conviction as a con- 
stitutional lawyer, that the Union is totally void in point of principle 
and of constitutional force. I tell you that no portion of the empire 
had the power to traffic on the rights and liberties of the Irish people. 
The Irish people nominated them to make laws, and not legislatures. 
They were appointed to act under the constitution and not annihilate 
it. Their delegation from the people was confined within the limits of 
the constitution, and the moment the Irish parliament went beyond 
those limits and destroyed the constitution, that moment it annihilated 
its own power, but could not annihilate the immortal spirit of liberty, 
which belongs, as a rightful inheritance, to the people of Ireland. 
Take it then from me that the Union is void. I admit there is the 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. (J(37 

force of a law, because it has been supported by the policeman's 
truncheon, by the soldier's bayonet, and by the hoi-seman's sword ; 
because it is supported by the courts of law, and those who have 
power to adjudicate in them ; but I say solemnly, it is not supported 
by constitutional right. The Union, therefore, in my thorough con- 
viction, is totally void, and I avail myself of this opportunity to 
announce to several hundreds of thousands of my fellow-subjects, 
that the Union is an unconstitutional law, and that it is not fated to 
last long — its hour is approaching. America offered us her sym- 
pathy and support. We refused the support but we accepted the 
sympathy ; and while we accepted the sympathy of the Americans 
we stood upon the firm ground of the right of every human being 
to liberty ; and I, in the name of the Irish nation, declare that no 
support ol^tained from America should be purchased by the price of 
abandoning principle for one moment, and that principle is, that 
ever}^ human being is entitled to freedom. 

My friends, I want nothing for the Irish but their country, and I 
think the Irish are competent to obtain their own country for them- 
selves. I like to have the sympathy of every good maju everywhere, 
but I want not armed support or physical strength from any country. 
The Republican party in France offered me assistance. I thanked 
them for their sympathy, but I distinctly refused to accept any sup- 
port from them. I want support from neither France nor America, 
and if that usurper, Louis Philippe, who trampled on the liberties 
of his own gallant nation, thought fit to assail me in his newspaper, 
I returned the taunt with double vigor, and I denounce him to Europe 
and the woi'ld as a treacherous tyrant, who has violated the compact 
with his own country, and thei'efore is not fit to assist the liberties 
of any other country. I want not the support of France ; I want 
not the support of America ; I have physical support enough about 
me to achieve any change ; but you know well that it is not my plan 
— I will not risk the safety of one of you. I could not afford the 
loss of one of you — I will protect you all, and it is better for you 
all to be merry and alive, to enjoy the repeal of the Union ; but there 
is not a man of you there that would not, if we were attacked unjustly 
and illegally, be ready to stand in the open field by my side. Let 
every man that concurs in that sentiment lift up his hand. 

Every individual in the imineuse naultitude lifted his hand amidst tremendous 
cbeering. 



(5(38 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

The assertion of tlmt .seiitiiiiciit is our sure protection, for no- 
person will attack us, and we will attack nobody. Indeed, it would 
be the height of absurdity for us to think of making any attack ; for 
there is not one man in his senses in Europe or America, that does 
not admit that the repeal of the Union is now inevitable. The Eng- 
lish papers taunted us, and their writers laughed us to scorn ; but 
now thej' admit that it is impossible to resist the application for 
repeal. More power to you. But that even shows we have power 
enough to know how to use it. Why, it is only this week that one of 
the leading Loudon newspapers, called the "Morning Herald,"' who 
had a reporter at the Lismore meeting, published an account of that 
great and mighty meeting, and in that account the writer expressly says 
that it will be impossible to refuse so peaceable, so determined, so 
unanimous a people, ^ as the people of Ireland, the restoration of 
their domestic legislature. For my own part, I would have thought 
it wholly unnecessary to call together so large a meeting as this, but 
for the trick played by Wellington, and Peel, and Graham, and 
Stanley, and the rest of the paltry administration, by whose govern- 
ment this country is disgraced. I don't suppose so worthless an 
administration ever before got together. Lord Stanley is a renegade 
from Whiggism, and Sir James Graham is woi'se. Sir Robei't Peel 
has five hundred colors on his bad standard, and not one of them is 
permanent. To-day it is orange, to-morrow it will be green, the 
day after neither one nor the other, but we shall take care that it 
shall never be dyed in blood. 

Then there is the poor old Duke of Wellington, and nothing was 
ever so absurd as their deification of him in England. The English 
historian — rather the Scotch one — Alison, an arrant Tory, admits 
that the Duke of Wellington was surpi-ised at Waterloo, and if he 
got victoriously out of that battle, it was owing to the valor of the 
British troops, and their unconquerable detci-mination to die, but 
not to yield. No man was ever a good soldier, but the man who 
goes into the battle determined to conquer or not come back from 
the battle-field. No other principle makes a good soldier ; conquer 
or die is the battle cry for the good soldier ; conquer or die is his 
only security. The Duke of Wellington had troops at Waterloo 
that had learned that word, and there were Irish troops amongst 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. 669 

them. You all remember the verses made by the poor Shan Van 
Vocht : 

" At famed Waterloo, 

Duke Wellington would look blue 

If Paddy was not there too, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht." 

Yes, the glory he got there was bought by the blood of the Eng- 
lish, Irish, and Scotch soldiers — the glory was yours. He is nom- 
inally a member of the administration, but yet they would not 
entrust him with any kind of otSce. He has no duty at all to perform, 
but a sort of Irish anti-repeal warden. I thought I never would be 
obliged to the ministry, but I am obliged to them. They put a 
speech abusing the Irish into the Queen's mouth. They accused us 
of disaflection, but they lie ; it is their speech ; there is no disaffec- 
tion in Ireland. "We were loyal to the sovereigns of Great Britain, 
even when they were our enemies ; we were loj'al to George the 
Third, even when he betrayed us ; we were loyal to George the 
Fourth, when he blubbered and cried when we forced him to eman- 
cipate us. We were loj-al to old Billy, though his minister put into 
his mouth a base, bloody, and intolerant speech against Ireland ; and 
we are loyal to the Queen, no matter what our enemies may say to 
the contrary. It is not the Queen's speech, and I pronounce it to 
be a lie. There is no dissatisfaction in Ireland, but there is this — a 
full deternnnation to obtain justice and liberty. I am much obliged 
to the ministr}' for that speech, for it gives me, amongst other things, 
an opportunity of addressing such meetings as this. I had held the 
monster meetings. I had fully demonstrated the opinion of Ireland. 
I was convinced their unanimous determination to obtain liberty was 
sufficiently signified by the many meetings already held ; but when 
the minister's speech came out, it was necessary to do something 
more. Accordingly, I called a monster meeting in Loughrea. I 
called another meeting in Cliffden. I had another monster meeting 
in Lismore, and here now we are assembled on the Rath of Mullagh- 
mast. 

At MuUaghmast (and I have chosen this for this obvious reason), 
•we are on the precise spot where English treachery — aye, and false 
Irish treachery, too — consummated a massacre that has never been 
imitated, save in the massacre of the Mamelukes by Mahomet Ali. 



670 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

It was necessary to have Turks atrocious enough to commit a crime 
equal to that perpetrated by Englishmen. But do not think that 
the massacre at Mullaghmast was a question between Protestants and 
Catholics — it was no such thing. The murdered persons were to 
be sure Catholics, but a great number of the murderers were also 
Catholic, and Irishmen, because there were then, as well as now, 
many Catholics who were traitors to Ireland. But we have now 
this advantage, that we may have many honest Protestants joining 
us — joining us heartily in hand and heart, for old Ireland and lib- 
erty. I thought this a fit and becoming spot to celebrate, in the 
open day, our unanimity in declaring our determination not to be 
misled by any treachery. Oh, my friends, I will keep you clear of 
all treachery — there shall be no bargain, no compromise with Eng- 
land — we shall take nothing but repeal, and a parliament in College 
Green. You will never, by my advice, confide in any false hopes 
they hold out to you ; never confide in anything coming from them, 
or cease from your struggle, no matter what promise ma}' be held 
to you, until you hear mc say I am satisfied ; and I will tell you 
where I will say that^ — near the statue of King "William, in College 
Green. No, we came here to express our determination to die to a 
man, if necessary, in the cause of old Ireland. We came to take 
advice of each other, and above all, I believe you came here to take 
my advice. I can tell you, I have the game in my hand — I have 
the triumph secure — I have the repeal certain, if you but obey my 
advice. [Great cheers, and cries of " We will obey you in any- 
thing."] 

I will go slow — you must allow me to do so — but you will go sure. 
No man shall find himself imprisoned or persecuted who follows my 
advice. I have led you thus far in safety ; I have swelled the multi- 
tude of repealers until they are identified with the entire population, 
or nearly the entire population of the laud, for seven-eighths of the 
Irish people are now enrolling themselves repealers. [Cheers and 
cries of more power to you.] I don't want more power; I have 
power enough, and all I ask of j'ou is to allow me to use it. I will 
go on quietly and slowly, but I will go on firmly, and with a cer- 
tainty of success. I am now arranging a plan for the formation of 
the Irish House of Commons. 

It is a theory, but it is a theory that may be realized in three 



DANIEL O'CONNELL. (371 

■weeks. The repeal arbitrators are beginning to act ; the people are 
submitting their ditTerences to men chosen by themselves. You will 
see by the newspapers that Dr. Gray and my son, and other gentle- 
men, have already held a petty session of their own, where justice 
will be administered free of all expense to the people. The people 
shall have chosen magistrates of their own in the room of the magis- 
trates who have been removed. The people shall submit their differ- 
ences to them, and shall have sti'ict justice administered to them 
that shall not cost them a single farthing. I shall go on with that 
l^lan until wo have all disputes settled and decided by justices ap- 
pointed by the people themselves. [Long may you live.] I wish 
to live long enough to have perfect justice administered to Ireland, 
and liberty proclaimed throughout the land. It will take me some 
time to prepare my plan for the formation of the new Irish House of 
Commons — that plan which we will yet submit to her Majesty for 
lier approval, when she gets rid of her present paltry aduiinistration 
and has one that I can support. But I must finish that job before I 
go forth, and one of my reasons for calling you together is to state 
my intentions to you. Before I arrange my plan the Conciliation 
Hall will be finished, and it will be worth any man's while to go 
from MuUaghmast to Dublin to see it. 

When we have it arranged I will call together three hundred, as 
the "Times"' called them, bogtrotters, but better men never stepped on 
pavement. But I will have the three hundred and no thanks to 
them. Wales is up at present, almost in a state of insurrection. 
The people there have found that the landlords' power is too great 
and has been used tyrannically, and I believe j^ou agree with them 
tolerably well in that. They insist on the sacredness of the right of 
the tenants to security of possession, and with the equity of tenure 
which I would establish we will do the landlords full justice, but we 
will do the people justice also. We will recollect that the land 
is the landlord's, and let him have the benefit of it, but we 
will also recollect that the labor belongs to the tenant and the tenant 
must have the value of his labor, not transitory and by the day, but 
permanently and by the year. Yes, my friends, for this purpose I 
must get some time. I worked the present repeal year tolerably 
well. I believe no one in January last would believe that we could 
have such a meeting within the year as the Tara demonstration. 



(372 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

You may be sure of this — and I say it iu the presence of Him who 
will judge me— that I never will willfully deceive you. I have but 
one wish under heaven, and that is for the liberty and prosperity of 
Ireland. I am for leaving England to the English, Scotland to the 
Scotch, but we must have Ireland for the Irish. I will not be con- 
tent until I see not a single man in any office, from the lowest 
constable to the Lord Chancellor, but Irishmen. This is our land, 
and we must have it. We will be obedient to the Queen, joined to 
England by the golden link of the Crown, but we must have our 
own parliament, our own bench, our own magistrates, and we will 
give some of the shoneens who now occupy the bench leave to retire, 
such as those lately appointed by Sugdcn. He is a pretty boy, sent 
here from England ; but I ask, did you ever hear such a name as he 
has got? I remember, in Wexford, a man told me he had a pig at 
home which he was so fond of that he would call it Sugden. No ; 
we shall get judicial independence for Ireland. It is for this jiurpose 
we are assembled here to-day, as every countenance I see around 
me testifies. If there is any one here who is for the Union, let him 
say so. Is there anybody here for the repeal? [Cries of ''all, all," 
and loud cheering.] 

Yes, my friends, the Union was begot in iniquity — it was perpe- 
trated in fraud and cruelty. It was no compact, no bargain, but it 
■was an act of the most decided tyranny and corruption that was ever 
yet perpetrated. Trial by jury was suspended — the right of personal 
protection was at an end — courts martial sat throughout the land — 
and the county of Kildare, among others, flowed with blood. Oh, 
my friends, listen now to the man of peace, who will never expose 
you to the power of your enemies. In 1798 there were some brave 
men, some valiant men, to head the people at large, but there were 
many traitors, who left the people in the power of their enemies. 
The Curragh of Kildare afforded an instance of the ftxte which Irish- 
men were to expect, who confided in their Saxon enemies. Oh, it 
was an ill-organized, a premature, a foolish, and an absurd insurrec- 
tion ; but you have a leader now who never will allow you to com- 
mit any act so foolish or so destructive. How delighted do I feel 
with the thorough conviction which has come over the minds of the 
people, that they could not gratify your enemies more than by com- 
mittinof a crime. No ; our ancestors suffered for confidin<j in the 



DANIEL 0' CON NELL. 673 

English, but we never will confide in them. They suifered for being 
divided amongst themselves. There is no division amongst us. 
They sufTcred for their own dissensions — for not standing man to 
man by each other's side. We shall stand peaceably side by side 
in the face of every enemy. Oh, how delighted was I in the scenes 
whicli I witnessed as I came along here to-day ! How my heart 
throljbed, how my spirit was elevated, how my bosom swelled with 
delight at the multitude which I beheld, and which I shall behold, 
of the stalwart and strong men of Kildare ! I was delighted at the 
activity and force that I saw around me, and my old heart grew 
warm again in admiring the beauty of the dark-eyed maids and ma- 
trons of Kildare. Oh, there is a starlight sparkling from the eye of 
a Kildare beauty, that is scarcely equalled, and could not be 
excelled all over the world. And remember that you are the sons, 
the fathers, the brothers, and the husbands of such women, and a 
traitor or a coward could never be connected with any of them. 
Yes, I am in a county, remarkable in the history of Ireland for its 
bravery and its misfortune, for its credulity in the faith of others, 
for its people judged of the Saxon by the honesty and honor of their 
own natures. I am in a county celebrated for the sacrcdness of its 
shrines and fanes. I am in a county where the lamp of Kildare's 
holy shrine burned with its sacred fire, through ages of darkness 
and storm — that fire which for six centuries burned before the high 
altar without being extinguished, being fed continuously, without 
the slightest interruption, and it seemed to me to have been not an 
inapt representation of the continuous fidelity and religious love of 
country of the men of Kildare. Yes, you have those high qualities 
— religious fidelity, continuous love of country. Even your ene- 
mies admit that the world has never produced any people that 
exceeded the Irish in activity and strength. The Scottish philoso- 
pher has declared, and the French philosopher has confirmed it, that 
number one in the human race is, blessed be Heaven, the Irishman. 
In moral virtue, in religion, in perseverance, and in glorious tem- 
perance, you excel. Have I any teetotallers here? Yes, it is tee- 
totallism that is repealing the Union. I could not afford to bring 
you together, I would not dare to bring you together, but that I had 
the teetotallers for my police. 

Yes, among the nations of the earth, Ireland stands number one 



(574 TIIEASURY OF ELOQUEXCE. 

ill the ph^'sical strengtli of her «oiis, and in the beaut}' and purity of 
licr daughters. Ireland, land of my forefathei's, hoAV my mind 
expands, and my spirit walks abroad in something of majesty, when 
I contemplate the high qualities, inestimable virtues, and true 
purity and piety, and religious fidelity of the inhabitants of your 
green fields and productive mountains. Oh, what a scene sur- 
rounds us! — It is not only the countless thousands of brave and 
active and peaceable and religious men that are here assembled, but 
nature herself has written her character with the finest beauty in the 
verdant plains that surround us. Let any man run round the hori- 
zon with his eye, and tell me if created nature ever produced any- 
thing so green and so lovely, so undulating, so teeming with 
production. The richest harvests that any land can produce are 
those reaped in Ireland ; and then here are the sweetest meadows, 
the greenest fields, the loftiest mountains, the i)m'cst streams, the 
noblest rivers, the most capacious harbors - — and her water-power is 
equal to turn the machinery of the whole world. Oh, my friends, 
it is a country worth fighting fur — it is a country worth dying for; 
but iibove all, it is a country worth being tranquil, determined, sub- 
missive and docile ; for disciplined as you are in obedience to those 
■who are breaking the way, and trampling down the barriers between 
you and your constitutional liberty, I will see every man of you 
having a vote, and every man protected by the Ijallot from the agent 
or landlord. I will see labor jirotected, and every title to posses- 
sion recognized, when you arc industrious and honest. I will see 
prosperity again throughout ^our land — the busy hum of the shut- 
tle and the tinkling of the smithy shall be heard again. . We shall 
.see the nailer employed even until the middle of the night, and the 
carpenter covering himself with his chips. I will see prosperity ia 
all its gradations spreading through a hapt^y, contented, religious 
land. I will hear the lij^mn of a happy people go forth at sunrise 
to God in pi'aise of his mercies — and I will see the evening sun set 
down amongst the uplifted hands of a religious and free population. 
Every blessing that man can bestow and religion can confer upon 
the faithful heart, shall spread throughout the land. Stand by me 
— join with me — I will say be obedient to me, and Ireland shall be 
free. 



SPEECHES, 



Charles Phillips, Esq, 



[C75] 



A Speech 

Delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr. Finlat bt the 
Roman Catholics op the Town and Countt of Sligo. 



f"^ THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most experienced 
gj^ speaker might justly tremble in addressing you, after the 
f display you have just witnessed. What then, must I feel, 
^ who never before addressed a public audience? However, it 
■would be but an unworthy affectation in me, were I to conceal from 
you the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness. The 
exaggerated estimate which other countries have made of the few 
services so young a man could render, has I hope, inspired me with 
the sentiments it ought; but here, I do confess to you, I feel no 
ordinary sensation — here, where every object springs some new 
association, and the loveliest objects, mellowed as they are by time, 
rise painted on the eye of memory — here, where the light of 
heaven first blessed my infant view, and nature breathed into my 
infant heart, that ardor for my country which nothing but death 
can chill — here, where the scenes of my childhood remind me how 
innocent I was, and the gi'aves of my fathers admonish me how 
pure I should continue — here, standing as 1 do amongst ray fairest, 
fondest, earliest sympathies — such a welcome, operating, not 
merely as an affectionate tribute, but as a moral testimony, does 
indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me. 

Oh ! believe me, warm is the heart that feels, and willing is the 
tongue that speaks ; and still, I cannot, by shaping it to my rudely 
inexpressive phrase, shock the sensibility of a gratitude too full to 
be suppressed, and yet (how far !) too eloquent for language. 

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this day, it is 
that which I feel in introducing to the friends of my youth the friend 
of my adoption ; though perhaps I am committing one of our im- 



678 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

puted blunders, when I speak of introducing one whose patriotism 
has ah-eady rendered him familiar to every heart in Ireland ; a man, 
■who, conquering every disadvantage, and spurning every difEculty, 
has poured around our misfortunes the splendor of an intellect, 
that at once irradiates and consumes them. For the services he has 
rendered to his country, from my heart I thank him ; and, for 
myself, I offer him a personal, it may be selfish tribute, for saving me, 
by his presence this night, from an impotent attempt at his pane- 
gyric. Indeed, gentlemen, yon can have little idea of what he has to 
endure, who in these times, advocates your cause. Every calumny 
which the venal and the vulgar, and the vile, are lavishing upon 3'ou, 
is visited with exaggeration upon us. We are called traitors, 
because we would rally round the crown an unanimous people. Wo 
are called apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity. 
We are branded as separatists, because of our endeavors to annihil- 
ate the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To 
these niaj' be added, the frowns of power, the env3'^ of dulncss, the 
mean malice of exposed self-interest, and, it may be, in despite of 
all natural affection, even the discountenance of kindred ! — Well, be 

it so, — 

For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past. 
For thee, my couutry, welcome, even the last ! 

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when I was 
bigoted as the blackest ; but I thank the Being who gifted me Avith 
a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank you, who 
afforded such convincing testimonies of my error. I saw you 
enduring with patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing before 
the insults of revived anniversaries ; in private life, exemplary ; in 
public, unoffending ; in the hour of peace, asserting your loy- 
alty ; in the hour of danger, proving it. Even when an invading 
enemy victoriously penetrated into the very heart of our country, I 
saw the banner of your allegiance beaming refutation on your slan- 
derers ; was it a wonder, then that I seized my prejudices, and with 
a blush burned them on the altar of my country ! 

The great question of Catholic, shall I not rather say, of Irish 
emancipation, has now assumed that national aspect which imperi- 
ously challenges the scrutiny of every one. While it was shrouded 
in the mantle of religious myster3% with the temple for its sanctuary, 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. (J79 

and the pontiff for its sentinel, the vulgar eye might shrink and the 
vulgar spirit shudder. But now it has come forth, visible and 
tangible for the inspection of the laity ; and I solemnly protest, 
di-essed as it has been in the double haberdashery of the English 
minister and the Italian prelate, I know not whether to laugh at its 
appearance, or to loathe its pretensions — to shudder at the deform- 
ity of its original creation, or smile at the grotesqueness of its 
foreign decorations. Only just admire this far-famed security bill, 
this motley compound of oaths and penalties, which, under the name 
of emancipation, would drag your prelates with a halter about their 
necks to the vulgar scrutiny of every village tyrant, in order to 
enrich a few political traders and distil through some state alembic 
the miserable rinsings of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate 
aristocracy ! Only just admire it ! Originally engendered by our 
friends the opposition, with a cuckoo insidiousness they swindled it 
into the nest of the treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly 
hatched with the beak of the one, and the nakedness of the other, 
they sent it for its feathers to Mouseigneur Quarantotti, who has 
obligingly transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, the rapacity 
of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its plumassier, to be baptized by 
the bishops, and received aequo gratoque aniino hy the jieople of 
Ireland ! ! Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti ! Oh, thou 
superlative coxcomb of the conclave ! what an estimate hast thou 
formed of the mind of Ireland ! Yet why should I blame this 
wretched scribe of the Propaganda ! He had every right to specu- 
late as he did ; all the chances of the calculation were in his favor. 
Uncommon must be the people, over whom centuries of oppression 
have revolved in vain ! Strange must be the mind, which is not 
subdued by suffering ! Sublime the spirit which is not debased by 
servitude! God, I give thee thanks! — he knew not Ireland. 
Bent — broken — manacled as she had been, she will not boAV to the 
mandate of an Italian slave, transmitted through an English vicar. 
For my own part, as an Irish Protestant, I trample to earth this 
audacious and desperate experiment of authority ; and for you, as 
Catholics, the time has come to give that calumny the lie, which 
represents 3^ou as subservient to a foreign influence. That influ- 
ence, indeed, seems not quite so unbending as it suited the purposes 
of bigotry to represent it, and appears now not to have conceded 



680 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

more, only because more was not demanded. The theolog}' of the- 
question is not for me to argue, it cannot be in better hands than in 
those of your bishops ; and I can have no doubt that wlien they 
bring their rank, their learning, their talents, their piety, and their 
patriotism to this sublime deliberation, they will consult the dignity 
of that venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and, 
immutable ; which time could not crumble, nor pei'secutions shake, 
nor revolutions change ; which has stood amongst us, like some stu- 
pendous and majestic Appeninc, the earth rocking at its feet, and the 
heavens roaring around its head, firmly balanced on the base of its 
eternity ; the relic of avh-^t was ; the solemn and sublime memento 
of what must be ! 

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the church of Eng- 
land? Undoubtedly it is. As an Irishman, I feel my liberties 
interwoven, and the best affections of my heart as it were enfihrcd 
with those of my Catholic countrymen ; and as a Protestant, con- 
vinced of the purity of my own faith, would I not debase it by post- 
poning the powers of reason to the suspicious instrumentality of 
this woi'ld's conversion? No; surrendering as I do, uitli a proud 
contempt, all the degrading advantages with which an ecclesiastical 
usurpation would invest me ; so I will not interfere with a blas- 
phemous intrusion between any man and his Maker. I hold it a 
criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar of a single 
motive for his devotion : and I hold it an equal insult to my own faith, 
to offer me any boon for its profession. This pretended emancipa- 
tion bill passing into a law, would, in my mind, strike not a blow at 
this sect or that, but at the very vitality of Christianity itself. I am 
thoroughly convinced that the antichristian connection between 
church and state, which it was suited to increase, has done more 
mischief to the Gospel interest, than all the ravings of infidelity since 
the crucifixion. The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never 
meant it to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the source of a 
corrupt ascendancy. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to irritate ; 
to associate, not to seclude ; to collect together, like the baptismal 
dove, every creed and clime and color in the universe, beneath the 
spotless wing of its protection. The union of church and state only 
converts good Christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves 
into pretended Christians. It is at best but a foul and adulterous 



CHARLES PtllLLIPS. 681 

connection, polluting the purity of heaven -with the abommation of 
earth, and hanging the tatters of a political piety upou the cross of 
au insulted Saviour. 

Keligion, holy religion, ought not, in the words of its Founder, 
to be " led into temptation." The hand that holds her chalice should 
be pure, and the priests of her temple should be spotless as tlie vest- 
ments of their ministry. Eank only degrades, wealth only impov- 
erishes, ornaments but disfigure her. I would have her pure, 
unpensioned, unstipendiary ; she should rob the earth of nothing but 
its sorrows : a divine arch of promise, her extremities should rest on 
the horizon, and her span embrace the universe ; but her only suste- 
nance should be the tears that were exhaled and embellished by the 
sunbeam. Such is my idea of what religion ought to be. What 
would this bill make it? A mendicant of the Castle, a menial at the: 
levee, its manual the red book, its liturgy the pension list, its gospeli 
the will of the minister ! Methinks I see the stalled and fatted vic- 
tim of its creation, cringing with a brute suppliancy through the 
venal mob of ministerial flatterers, crouching to the ephemeral idol 
of the day; and, lilie the devoted sacrifice of ancient heathenism, 
glorying in the garland that only decorates him for death ! I will 
read to you the opinions of a celebrated Irishman, on the suggestion 
in his day, of a bill similar to that now proposed for our oppression. 
He was a man who added to the pride, not merely of his country, 
but of his species ; a man who robed the very soul of inspiration in 
the splendors of a pui-e and overpowering eloquence. I allude to 
Mr. Burke, — an authority at least to which the sticklers for estab- 
lishments can ofier no objection. "Before I had written thus far," 
says he, in his letter on the penal laws, " I heard of a scheme for 
giving the Castle the patronage of the presiding members of the 
Catholic clergy. At first I could scarcely credit it ; for I believe it 
is the first time that the presentation to other people's alms has been 
desired in any country. Never were the members of one religious 
sect fit to appoint the pastors to another. It is a great deal to sup- 
pose that the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Romau 
church in Ireland, with a religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps 
they cannot, perhaps tliey dare not do it. But suppose them to be as 
well inclined, as I know that I am, to do the Catholics all lands of 
justice, I declare I would not, if it were in my power, take that pat- 



G82 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ronnge on myself. I know I ought not to do it. I belong to another 
coniraunity ; and it would be an intolerable usnrpation in me, where 
I conferred no benefit, or even if I did confer temporal advantages. 
How can the Lord Lieutenant form the least judgment on their mer- 
its, so as to decide which of the Popish priests is fit to be a bishop? 
It cannot be. The idea is ridiculous. He will hand them over to 
Lords-Lieutenant of counties, justices of the peace, and others, who, 
for the purpose of vexing and turning into derision this miserable 
people, will jjick out the worst and most obnoxious they can find 
amongst the clergy to govern the rest. Whoever is complained 
against by his brother, will be considered as persecuted ; whoever 
is censured by his superior, will be looked upon as oppressed ; who- 
ever is careless in his opinions, loose in his morals, will be called a 
liberal man, and will be supposed to have incurred hatred because 
he was not a bigot. Informers, tale-bearers, perverse and obstinate 
men, flatterers, who turn their back upon their flock, and court the 
Protestant gentlemen of their country, will be the objects of prefer- 
ment; and then I run no risk in foretelling, that whatever order, 
quiet, and morality you have in the country, will be lost." Now, 
let me ask you, is it to such characters as those described by Burke, 
that you would delegate the influence imputed to your priesthood? 
Believe me, you would see them transferring their devotion from 
the Cross to the Castle ; wearing their sacred vestments but as a 
masquerade appendage, and, under the degraded passport of the 
Almighty's name, sharing the pleasures of the court, and the spoils 
of the people. When I say this I am bound to add, and I do so 
from many proud and pleasing recollections, that I think the 
impression on the Catholic clergy of the present day would be 
late, and would be delible. But it is human nature. Rare ai'e 
the instances in which a contact with the court has not been the 
beginning of corruption. The man of God is peculiarly discon- 
nected with it. It directly violates his special mandate, who took 
his birth from the manger, and his disciples from the fishing-boat. 
Judas was the first who received the money of power, and it ended 
in the disgrace of his creed and the death of his master. If I was a 
Catholic, I woul'd peculiarly deprecate any interference with my 
priesthood. Indeed, I do not think, in any one respect in which we 
should wish to view the delegates of the Almighty, that, making fair 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 683 

allowances for buiuMn infirmity, they could be amended. The Cath- 
olic clergy of Ireland are rare examples of the doctrines they incul- 
cate. Pious in their habits, almost primitive in their manners, they 
have no care but their flock ; no study but their Gospel. It is not 
in the gaudy ring of courtly dissipation that you will find the Mur- 
rays, the Corpingers, and the Moylands of the present day — not at 
the levee, or at the lounge, or the election riot. No ; you will find 
them wherever good is to be done, or evil to be connected — rearing 
their mitres in the van of misery, consoling the captive, reforming 
the convict, enriching the orphan ; ornaments of this world, and 
-emblems of a better ; preaching their God through the practice of 
«very virtue ; monitors at the confessional, apostles in the pulpit, 
saints at the death bed, holding the sacred water to the lip of sin, 
or pouring the redeeming unction on the agonies of despair. Oh, I 
would hold him little better than the Promethean robber, who 
would turn the fire of their eternal altar into the impure and perish- 
able mass of this world's preferment. Better by far that the days of 
ancient barbarism should revive ; belter that your religion should 
again take refuge among the fastnesses of the mountain, and the sol- 
itude of the cavern ; better that the rack of a muixlerous bigotry- 
should again terminate the miseries of your priesthood, and that the 
gate of freedom should be only open to them through the gate of 
martyrdom, than they should gild their missals .with the wages of a 
■court, and expect their ecclesiastical promotion, not from their 
superior piety, but their comparative prostitution. But why this 
interference with your principles of conscience? Why is it that they 
will not erect your liberties save on the ruin of your temples ? Why 
is it that in the day of peace they demand secui-ities from a people 
who in the day of danger constituted their strength ? When were 
they denied every security that was reasonable? Was it in 1776, 
when a cloud of enemies, hovering on our coast, saw every heart a 
shield, and every hill a fortress? Did they want securities in Cath- 
olic Spain? Were they denied securities in Catholic Portugal? 
What is their security to-day in Catholic Canada? Return — 
return to us our own glorious Wellington, and tell incredulous 
England what was her security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, 
or on the summit of Barrossa ! Rise, libelled martyrs of the Penin- 
sula ! rise from your " gory bed," and give security for your child- 



(38i TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

less parents ! No, there is not a Catholic familj' in Ireland, tliat for 
the glorj' of Great Britain is not weeping over a child's, a brother's, 
or a parent's grave, and yet still she clamors for securities ! Oh, 
Prejudice ! where is thy reason ! Oh, Bigotrj^ ! where is thy hUish ! 
If ever there was an opportunity for England to combine gratitude 
with justice, and dignity with safety, it is the present. Now, when 
Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish 
hero strikes the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyrenees. 
England — England ! do not hesitate. This hour of triumph may be 
but the hour of trial ; another season may see the splendid pano- 
rama of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and 
glittering beneath the ruins of another capital — perhaps of London. 
Who can say it? A few months since, JIoscow stood as splendid, 
as secure. Fair rose the morn on the patriarchal city — the empress 
of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of strangers; 
her thousand sj^ires pierced the very heavens, and her domes of gold 
reflected back the sunbeams. The spoiler came ; he marked her for 
his victim; and, as if his very glance was destiny, even before the 
night-i^ill, with all her pomp and wealth, and happiness, she \vithercd 
from the world ! A heap of ashes told where once stood IMoscow I 
Merciful God ! if this lord of desolation, heading his locust legions, 
were to invade our country ; though I do not ask what would be 
your determination ; though, in the language of our young enthusi- 
ast, I am sure you would oppose him with " a sword in one hand, 
and a torch in the other ; " still I do ask with fearlessness, upon 
what single principle of policy or of justice, could the advocates for 
your exclusion solicit your assistance ; could they expect you to 
support a constitution from whose benefits you were debarred? 
With what front could they ask you to recover an ascendancy, 
which, in point of fact, was but re-establishing your bondage? 

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland ready to join 
this despot — "a French party," as Mr. Grattan thought it decent, 
even in the very senate house, to promulgate. Sir, I sj^eak the uni- 
versal voice of Ireland, when I say, she spurns the imputation. 
There is no " Fi'ench party " here, but there is, — and it would be 
strange if there was not, — there is an Irish party — men who can- 
not bear to see their country taunted with the mockery of a consti- 
tution ; men who will be content with no connection that refuses 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 685 

them a community of benefits while it imposes a community of pri- 
vations ; men who, sooner than see this land polluted by the foot- 
steps of a slave, would wish the ocean-wave became its sepulchre, 
and that tbc orb of heaven forgot where it existed. It has been said 
too (and when we were to be calumniated, what has not been said?) 
that Irishmen are neither fit for freedom or grateful for favors. In 
the first place, I deny that to be a fiivor which is a right; and in the 
next place, I utterly deny that a system of conciliation has ever been 
adopted with respect to Ireland. Try them, and, my life on it, they 
will be found grateful. I think I know my countrymen ; they can- 
not help being grateful for a benefit ; and there is no country on the 
earth where one would l)e conferred with more characteristic benev- 
olence. They are, emphatically, the scbool-ljoys of the heart, a peo- 
ple of sympathy ; their acts spring instinctively from their passions ; 
by nature ardent, by instinct bravo, by inheritance generous. The 
children of impulse, they cannot avoid their virtues ; and to be other 
than noble, they must not only be unnatural l)ut unnational. Put 
my panegyric to the test. Enter the hovel of the Irish peasant. I 
do not say you will find the frugality of the Scotch, the comfort of 
the English, or the fantastic decorations of the French cottager ; but 
I do say, within those wretched bazaars of mud and misery you will 
find sensibility the most atfecting, politeness the most natural, hos- 
pitality the most grateful, merit the most unconscious ; their look is 
eloquence, their smile is love, their retort is wit, their remark is wis- 
dom ; not a wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which 
nature herself has inspired them; an acute observance of the pass- 
ing scene, and a deep insight into the motives of its agent. Tiy to 
deceive them, and see with M'hat shrewdness they will detect; try 
to outwit them, and see with what humor they will elude ; attack 
them with argument, and you will stand amazed at the strength of 
their expression, the rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their 
gesture. In short, God seems to have formed our country like our 
people ; he has thrown round the one its wild, magnificent, deco- 
rated rudeness ; he has infused into the other the simplicity of genius 
and the seeds of virtue ; he says audibly to us, " Give them cultiva- 
tion." 

This is the way. Gentlemen, in which I have always looked upon 
your question — not as a party, or a sectarian, or a Catholic, but as 



(386 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

an Irish question. Is it possible that any man can seriously believe 
the paralyzing five millions of such a people as I have been describ- 
ing, can be a benefit to the empire ! Is there any man who deserves 
the name not of a statesman, but of a rational being, who can think 
it politic to rob such a multitude of all the energies of an honorable 
ambition ! Look to Protestant Ireland, shooting over the empire 
those rays of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, that have at 
once embellished and preserved it. I speak not of a former era. I 
refer not for my example to the day just passed, when our Burkes, 
our Barrys, and our Goldsmiths, exiled l)y this system from their 
native shoi-e, wreathed the "immortal shamrock" round the brow of 
painting, poetry, and eloquence ! But now, even while I speak, who 
leads the British senate ? A Protestant Irishman ! Who guides the 
British arms? A Protestant Irishman ! And why, why is Catholic 
Ireland, with her quintuple population, stationary and silent? Have 
physical causes neutralized its energies? Has the religion of Christ 
stupefied its intellect? Has the God of mankind become the partisan 
of a monopoly, and put an interdict on its advancement? Stranger, 
do not ask the bigoted and jDampered renegade who has an interest 
in deceiving 30U ; but open the penal statutes, and weep tears of 
blood over the reason. Come — come yourself, and see this un- 
happy people ; see the Irishman, the only alien in Ireland, in rags 
and wretchedness, staining the sweetest scenery ever eye reposed 
on, persecuted by the extorting middleman of some absentee land- 
lord, plundered by the Iny-proctor of some rapacious and uusym- 
pathizing incumbent, bearing through life but insults and injustice, 
and bereaved even of any hope in death liy the heart-rending reflec- 
tion that he leaves his children to bear, like their father, an abom- 
inable bondage? Is it the fact? Let any who doubts it walk out 
into your streets, and see the consequences of such a system ; see it 
rearing up crowds in a kind of apprenticeship to the prison, abso- 
lutely permitted by their parents, from utter despair, to lisp the 
alphabet and learn the rudiments of profligacy? For my part, 
never did I meet one of these 3'outhful assemblages without feeling 
within me a melancholy emotion. How often have I thought, within 
that little circle of neglected triflers who seem to have been born in 
caprice and bred in orphanage, there may exist some mind formed 
of the finest mould, and wrought for immortality; a soul swelling: 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. G87 

■with the energies and stamped with the patent of the Deity, which, 
under proper culture might perhaps bless, adorn, immortalize, or 
ennoble empires; some Cincinnatus, in whose breast the destinies 
of a nation may lie dormant; some Milton, "pregnant with celes- 
tial fire;" some Curran, who, when thrones were crumbled and 
d^'nasties forgotten, might stand the landmark of his country's 
genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and national dissolution, 
a, mental pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade 
things might moulder, and round whose summit eternity must 
play. Even in such a circle the young Demosthenes might have 
once been found, and Homer, the disgrace and glory of his age, 
have sung neglected ! Have not other nations witnessed those 
things, and who shall say that nature has peculiarly degraded the 
intellect of Ireland? Oh, my countrymen, let us hope that under 
better auspices and a sounder policy, the ignorance that thinks so 
may meet its refutation. Let us turn from the blight and ruin of 
this wintry day to the fond anticipatiou of a happier period, when 
our prostrate land shall stand erect among the nations, fearless and 
unfettered ; her brow blooming with the wreath of science, and her 
path strewed with the offerings of art ; the breath of heaven bless- 
ing her flag, the extremities of earth acknowledging her name, her 
fields waving with the fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the 
contributions of commerce, and her temples vocal with unrestricted 
piety. Such is the ambition of the true patriot ; such are the views 
for which we are calumniated ! Oh, divine ambition ! Oh, delight- 
ful calumny ! Happy he who shall see thee accomplished ! Happy 
he who through every peril toils for thy attainment ! Proceed, friend 
of Ireland and partaker of her wrongs, pi'oceed undaunted to this 
glorious consummation. Fortune will not gild, power will not en- 
noble thee : but thou shalt be rich in the love and titled by the bless- 
ings of thy country ; thy path shall be illumined by the public eye, 
thy labors enlightened by the public gratitude ; and oh, i-emcmber — 
amid the impediments with which corruption will oppose, and the 
dejection with which disappointments may depress you — rememlier 
you are acquiring a name to be cherished by the future generations 
of earth, long after it has been enrolled amongst the inheritors of 
heaven. 



g38 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



A Speech 

Delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Eoman Catholics 
OF Cork. 



^^T is with no small degree of self-congratiilatiou that I at length 
P^ find myself in a province Avhich every glance of the eye, and 
pf every throb of the heart, tells me is truly Irish ; and that 
I, congratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that you re- 
ceive me not quite as a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the Christiau 
without regard to his creed, if to love the country but the more for 
its calamities, if to hate oppression though it be robed in i^ower, if 
to venerate integrity though it pine under persecution, gives a man 
any claim to your recognition, then, indeed, I am not a stranger 
amongst you. There is a bond of union between brethren, however 
distant ; there is a sympathy between the virtuous, however sep- 
parated ; there is a heaven-born instinct by which the associates of 
the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred natures, as it 
.were by magic, see in the fice of a stranger, the features of a friend. 
Thus it is, that, though we never met, you hail in me the sweet as- 
sociation, and I feel myself amongst you even as if I were in the 
home of my nativity. But this my knowledge of you was not left 
to chance ; nor was it left to the records of your charity, the memo- 
rials of your patriotism, your municipal magnificence, or your com- 
mercial splendor ; it came to me hallowed by the accents of that 
tongue on which Ireland has so often hung Avith ecstacy, heightened 
by the eloquence and endeared liy the sincerity of, I hope, our mu- 
tual friend. .Let me congratulate him on having become in some 
degree, naturalized iu a province, where the spirit of the elder day 
seems to have lingered ; and let me congratulate you ou the acquis- 
ition of a man who is at once the zealous advocate of your cause, 
and a practical instance of the injustice of your oppressions. Surely, 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 689 

surely if merit had fair play, if splendid talents, if indefatigable in- 
dustry, if great research, if unsullied principle, if a heart full of the 
finest afi'ections, if a mind matured in every manly accomplishment, 
in short, if every noble, public quality, mellowed and reflected in 
the pure mirror of domestic virtue, could entitle a subject to dis- 
tinction in a state, Mr. O'Connell shouldbe distinguished ; but, it is 
his crime to be a Catholic, and his curse to be an Irishman. Simple- 
ton ! he i^refers his conscience to a place, and the love of his country 
to a participation in her plunder ! Indeed he Avill never rise. If he 
joined the bigots of my sect, he might be a sergeant ; if he joined 
the infidels of your sect, he might enjoy a pension, and there is no 
knowing whether some Orange-corporator, at an Orange-anniver- 
sary, might not modestly yield him the precedence of giving " the 
glorious and immortal memory." Oh, j^es; he might be privileged 
to get drunk in gratitude to the man who colonized ignorance in his 
native land, and left to his creed the legacy of legalized persecution. 
Nor would he stand alone, no matter what might be the measure of 
his disgrace, or the degree of his dereliction. You will know there 
are many of your own community who would leave him at the dis- 
tance-post, lu contemplating their recreancy, I should be almost 
temjited to smile at the exhiljition of their pretensions, if there was 
not a kind of moral melancholy intermingled, that changed satire 
into pity, and ridicule into contempt. For my part, I behold them 
in the apathy of their servitude, as I would some miserable maniac 
in the contentment of his captivity. Poor creature ! when all that 
raised him from the brute is levelled, and his glorious intellect is 
mouldering in ruins, you may see him with his song of triumph, 
and his crown of straw, a fancied freeman amid the clanking of his 
chains, and an imnginaiy monarch beneath the inflictions of his 
keeper ! Merciful God ! is it not almost an argument for the sceptic 
and disbeliever, when we see the human shape almost without an 
aspiration of the human soul, separated by no boundary fi'om the 
beasts that perish — beholding with indiflerence the captivity of their 
country, the persecution of their creed, and the helpless, hopeless 
destiny of their children? But they have nor creed nor consciences, 
nor country ; their god is gold, their gospel is a contract, their church 
a counting-house, their characters a commodity ; they never pray but 
for the opportunities of corruption, and hold their consciences, as 



690 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

they do their government-debentures, at a pi'ice proportioned to th© 
misfortunes of tlicir country. 

But let us turn from these mendicants of disgrace : though Ireland 
is doomed to the stain of their birth, her mind need not be sullied 
by their contemplation. I turn from them Avith pleasure to the con- 
templation of your cause, which, as far as argument can affect it, 
stands on a sublime and splendid elevation. Every obstacle has 
vanished into air ; every favorable circumstance has hardened into 
adamant. The Pope, whom childhood was taught to lisp as the 
enemy of religion, and age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, 
has by his example put the princes of Christendom to shame. This 
day of miracles, in which the human heart has been strung to its 
extremest point of enei'gy ; this day,, to which posterity will look 
for in>tanccs of every crime and every virtue, holds not in its page 
of wonders a more sublime phenonemon, than that calumniated 
pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surrounded 
by the pomp of the Vatican and the splendors of the court, pouring 
the mandates of Christ from the throne of the Ctesars, nations were 
his subjects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid; 
he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, every 
knee bending, and every eye blessing the prince of one world and 
the prophet of another. Have we not seen him in one moment, his 
crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne a shadow, his home 
a dungeon ! But if we have, Catholics, it was only to show how 
inestimable is human virtue compared with human grandeur ; it was 
only to show those whose faith was failing, and whose fears were 
strengthening, that the simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety of the 
saints, and the patience of the martyrs, had nst wholly vanished. 
Perhaps it was also ordained to show the bigot at home, as well as 
the tyrant abroad, that though the person might be chained, and the 
motive calumniated, religion was still strong enough to support her 
sons, and to confound, if she could not reclaim, her enemies. No 
threats could awe, no promises could tempt, no suffci'ings could 
appal him ; mid the damps of his dungeon he dashed away the cup 
in which the pearl of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect 
on the state of the world at that moment ! All around him was 
convulsed, the very foundations of the earth seemed giving away, 
the comet was let loose that, " from its fiery hair shook pestilence 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 691 

and death," the twilight was gathering, the tempest was roaring, the 
darlcness was at hand ; but he towered sublime, like the last moun- 
tain in the deluge — majestic, not less in his elevation than in his 
solitude, immutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the last 
remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-plac(5 of heaven's light ! 
Thus have the terrors of the Vatican retreated ; thus has that cloud 
which hovered o'er your cause brightened at once into a sign of your 
faith and an assurance of your victory. 

Another obstacle, the omnipotence of France ; I know it was a 
pretence, but it Avas made an obstacle. What has become of it? 
The spell of her invincibilit}' destroyed, the spirit of her armies 
broken, her immense boundary dismembered, and the lord of her 
empire become the exile of a rock. She allows fancy no fear, and 
bigotry no speciousness ; and, as if in the very operation of the 
change to point the purpose of your redemption, the hand that 
replanted the rejected lily was that of an Irish Catltolic. Perhaps it 
is not also unworthy of remark, that the last day of her triumph, 
and the first of her decline, was that on which her insatiable chief- 
tain smote the holy head of your religion. You will hardly suspect 
I am imbued with the follies of superstition ; but when the man now 
unborn shall trace the story of that eventful day, he will see the 
adopted child of fortune, borne on the wings of victory from clime 
to clime, marking every movement with a triumph, and every pause 
with a crown, till time, space, and seasons, nay, even nature herself, 
seeming to vanish from before him — in the blasphemy of his am- 
bition he smote the apostle of his God, and dared to raise the ever- 
lasting Cross amid his perishable trophies ! I am no fanatic : but is 
it not remarkable ? May it not be one of those signs which the 
Deity has sometimes given, in compassion to our infirmity? — signs 
which, in the punishment of one nation, not unfrequently denote the 
warning to another : — 

" SigDS sent, by God to mark the will of Heaven : 
Signs wliicli bid nations weep and be forgiven." 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; and those whose 
consciousness taught them to expect what your loyalty should have 
taught them to repel, can no longer oppose you from the terrors of 
invasion. Thus, then, the papal phantom and the French threat 
have vanished into nothing. 



692 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Another obstacle, the tenets of your creed. Has England still to 
learn them? I will tell her where. Let her ask Canada, the last 
plank of her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, the first 
omen of her European splendor. Let her ask Spain, the most Cath- 
olic country in the universe, her Catholic friends, her Catholic allies, 
her rivals in the triumph, her reliance in the retreat, her last stay 
when the world had deserted her. They must have told her on the 
field of blood whether it was true that they " kept no faith with 
heretics." Alas, alas ! how miserable a thing is bigotry, when every 
friend puts it to the blush, and every triumph but rebukes its weak- 
ness. If England continued still to accredit this calumny, I would 
direct her for conviction to the hero, for whose gift alone she owes 
us an eternity of gratitude ; whom we have seen leading the van of 
universal emancipation, decking his wreath with the flowers of every 
soil, and filling liis army with the soldiers of every sect; befors 
whose splendid dawn, every tear exhaling, and every vapor vanish- 
ing, the colors of the European world have revived, and the spirit of 
European liberty (may no crime avert the omen!) seems to have 
arisen ! Suppose he was a Catholic, could this have been? Suppose 
Catholics did not follow him, could this have been ? Did the Cath- 
olic Cortes inquire his faith when they gave him the supreme com- 
mand? Did the Ecgent of Portugal withhold from his creed the 
reward of his valor? Did the Catholic soldier pause at Salamanca 
to dispute upon polemics ? Did the Catholic chieftain prove upon 
Barossa that he kept no faith with heretics ? or did the creed of 
Spain, the same with that of France, the opposite of that of England, 
prevent their association in the field of liberty? Oh, no, no, no! 
the citizen of every clime, the friend of every color, and the child of 
every creed, lil)erty walks abroad in the ubiquity of her benevolence : 
alike to her the varieties of faith and the vicissitudes of country ; 
she has no object but the happiness of man, no bounds but the 
extremities of creation. Yes, yes, it was reserved for Wellington 
to redeem his own country when ho was regenerating every other. 
It was reserved for him to show how vile were the aspersions ou 
your creed, how generous were the glowings of your gratitude. He 
was a Protestant, yet Catholics trusted him : he was a Protestant, 
yet Catholics advanced him ! He is a Protestant Knight in Catholic 
Portugal ; ho is a Protestant Duke in Catholic Spain ; he is a Prot- 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 693 

estant commander of Catholic armies. He is more : he is the living 
proof of the Catholic's liberality, and the undeniable refutation of 
the Protestant's injustice. Gentlemen, as a Protestant, though I 
may blush for the bigotry of many of my creed who continue obsti- 
nate, in the teeth of this conviction, still, were I a Catholic, I should 
feel little triumph in the victory. I should only hang my head at 
the distresses which this warfare occasioned to my country. I should 
only think how long she had withered in the agony of her disunion ; 
how long she had bent, fettered by slaves,. cajoled by blockheads, 
and plundered by adventurers ; the proverb of the fool, the prey of 
the politician, the dupe of the designing, the experiment of the des- 
perate ; struggling as it were between her own fanatical and infatu- 
ated parties, those hell-engendered serpents which enfold her, like 
the Trojan seer, even at the worship of her altars, and crush her to 
death in the very embraces of her children ! It is time (is it not?) 
that she should be extricated. The act would be proud, the means 
would be Christian ; mutual forbearance, mutual indulgence, mutual 
concession. I would say to the Protestant, " Concede : " I would 
say to the Catholic, "Forgive ; " I would say to both, "Though you 
bend not at the same shrine, you have a common God and a common 
country ; the one has commanded love, the other kneels to j'ou for 
peace." This hostility of her sects has been the disgrace, the pecu- 
liar disgrace of Christianity. The Gentoo loves his cast ; so does 
the Mahometan ; so does the Hindoo, whom England, out of the 
abundance of her charity, is about to teach her creed ; — I hope she 
may not teach her practice. But Christianity, Christianity alone, 
exhibits her thousand sects, each denouncing his neighbor here, in 
the name of God, and damning hereafter, out of pure devotion I 
"You're a heretic," says the Catholic : "You're a Papist," says the 
Protestant. " T appeal to Saint Peter," exclaims the Catholic : " I 
appeal to Saint Athanasius," cries the Protestant; "and if it goes to 
damning, he's as good at it as any saint in the calendar." "You'll 
all be damned eternally," moans out the Methodist ; "I'm the elect ! " 
Thus it is, you see, each has his anathema, his accusation, and his 
retort ; and in the end. Religion is the victim ! The victory of each 
is the overthrow of all ; and Infidelity, laughing at the contest, 
writes the refutation of their creed in the blood of the combatants I 
I wonder if this reflection has ever struck any of those reverend dig- 



694 TREASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

nitaries who rear their mitres against Catholic emancipation. Has 
it ever glanced across thoir Christian zeal, if the story of our country 
should have casually reached the valleys of Hindostan, with what an 
argument they arc furnishing the heathen world against their sacred 
missionary? In what terms could the Christian ecclesiastic answer 
the Eastern Brahmin, when he replied to his exhortation sin language 
such as this : " Father, we have heard your doctrine ; it is splendid 
in theory, specious in promise, sublime in prospect ; like the world 
to which it leads, it is rich in the miracles of light. But, Father, 
we have heard that there are times when its rays vanish and leave 
your sphere in darkness, or when your only lustre arises from mete- 
ors of fire, and moons of blood ; we have heard of the verdant island 
which the Great Spirit has raised in the bosom of the waters with 
such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave she has usurped worships 
the loveliness of her intrusion. The sovereign of our forests is not 
more generous in his anger than her sous ; the snow-flake, ei"e it 
falls on the mountain, is not purer than her daughters ; little inland 
seas reflect the splendors of her landscape, and her valleys smile at 
the story of the serpent ! Father, is it true that ihis isle of the sun, 
this people of the morning, find the fury of the ocean in your creed, 
and more than the venom of the viper in your policy ? Is it true, 
that for six hundred j'^ears her peasant has not tasted peace, nor her 
piety rested from prosecution? Oh, Brahma ! defend us from the 
God of the Christian ! Father, Father, return to your brethren ; 
retrace the waters ; we may live in ignorance, but we live in love, 
and we will not taste the tree that gives us evil when it gives us 
wisdom. The heart is our guide, nature is our gospel; in the imi- 
tation of our fathers we found our hope ; and, if we err, on the 
virtue of our motives we rely for our redemption." How would the 
missionaries of the mitre answer him? How will they answer that 
insulted Being of whose creed their conduct carries the refutation? 
But to what end do I argue with the Bigot ? — a wretch whom no 
philosophy can humanize, no charity soften, no religion reclaim, no 
miracle convert ; a monster who, red with the fires of hell and bend- 
ing under the crimes of earth, erects his murderous divinity upon 
a throne of skulls, and would gladly feed, even M'ith a brothers 
blood, the cannibal appetite of his rejected altar ! His very interest 
cannot soften him into humanity. Surely if it could, no man would 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 695 

be found mad enough to advocate a system which cankers the very 
heart of society and undermines the natural resources of government ; 
which takes away the strongest excitement to industry by closing up 
every avenue to laudable ambition ; which administers to the vanity 
or the vice of a party when it should only study the advantage of a 
people ; and holds out the perquisites of state as an impious bounty 
on the persecution of religion. I have already shown that the power 
of the Pope, that the power of France, and that the tenets of your 
creed, were but imaginary auxiliaries to this system. Another pre- 
tended obstacle has, however, been opposed to your emancipation. 
I .allude to the danger arising from a i'orcign influence, "\^'hat a 
triumphant answer can you give to that ! Methinks, as lately, I see 
the assemblage of your hallowed hierarchy, snnoundedby the priest- 
hood and followed by the people, waving aloft the crueitix of ( lirist 
alike against the seductions of the court and the commands of the 
conclave ! Was it not a delightful, a heart-cheering spectacle, to sec 
that holy band of brothers preferring the chance of martyrdom to 
the certainty of promotion, and postponing ail the gratihcations of 
worldly pride to the severe but heaven-gaining glories of their pov- 
erty? They acted honestly, and they acted wisely also; for I say 
here, before the largest assembly I ever saw in any country — and I 
believe you are almost all Catholics — I say here, that if the see of 
Home presumed to impose any temporal mandate directly or in- 
directly on the Irish people, the Irish bishops should at once aban- 
don it, or the flocks, one and all, would abjure and banish them l)oth 
together. History atfords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, 
arrogant, and venal interference of a papal usurper of former days 
in the temporal jurisdiction of this country; an intirfercnce assumed 
without right, exercised without principle, and fullowcd by calam- 
ities apparently witliout end. Thus, then, has every ol)stacle van- 
ished ; but it has done more ; every obstacle has, as it were, by 
miracle, produced a powerful argument in your favor. How do I 
prove it? Follow me in my proofs, and you will see by what linivs 
the chain is united. The power of Napoleon was the grand and 
leading obstacle to your emancipation. That power led him to iiic 
menace of an Irish invasion. What did that prove? Only the siii- 
fserity of Irish allegiance. On the very threat we poured foith o;ir 
volunteers, our yeomen, and our militia ; and the country became 



696 TEEASDKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

encircled with an armed and a loyal population. Thus, then, the 
calumny of your disaffection vanished. That power next led him to 
the invasion of Portugal. What did it prove ? Only the good faith of 
Catholic allegiance. Every field in the Peninsula saw the Catholic 
Portuguese hail the English Protestant as a brother and a friend, 
joined in the same pride and the same peril. Tlius, then, vanished 
the slander that you could not keep faith with heretics. Tiiat power 
next led him to the imprisonment of the Pontiff, so long suspected 
of being quite ready to sacrifice everj'thing to his interest and his do- 
minion. What did that prove? The strength of his principles, the 
puritj' of his faith, the disinterestedness of his practice. It proved 
a life spent in the study of the saints, and ready to be closed by an 
imitation of the martyrs. Thus, also, was the head of your religion 
vindicated to Europe. There remained behind but one impediment 
— your liability to a foreign influence. Now mark! The Pontiff's 
captivity led to the transmission of Quarantotti's rescript ; and on its 
arrival, from the priest to the peasant there was not a Catholic in the 
land who did not spurn the document of Italian audacity ! Thus, 
then, vanished also the phantom of a foreign influence ! Is this con- 
viction ? Is not the hand of God in it ? Oh yes ! for observe what 
followed. The very moment that power, which was the first and 
last leading argument against you, had, by its special operation, ban- 
ished every obstacle ; that power itself, as it were by enchantment, 
evaporated at once ; and jieace with Europe took away the last pre- 
tence for your exclusion. Peace with Europe ! alas, alas, there is 
no peace for Ireland ; the universal pacification was but the signal for 
renewed hostility to us ; and the mockery of its preliminaries were 
tolled through our provinces by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is 
it not time that this hostility should cease ? If ever there was a day 
when it was necessary, that day undoubtedly exists no longer. 

The continent is triumphant, the Peninsula is free, France is our 
all}'. The hapless house which gave birth to Jacobinism is extinct 
forever. The Pope has been found not only not hostile, but com- 
plying. Indeed, if England would recollect the share you had in 
these sublime events, the very recollection should subsidize her into 
gratitude. But should she not — should she, with a baseness mon- 
strous and unparalleled, forget our services, she has still to study a 
tremendous lesson. The ancient order of Europe, it is true, is 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 697 

restored, but -what restored it ? Coalition after coalition had crumbled 
away before the might of the conqueror ; crowns were but ephemeral ; 
monarchs only the tenants of an hour ; the descendants of Frederick 
dwindled into a vassal ; the heir of Peter shrunk into the recesses of 
his frozen desert ; the successor of Charles roamed a vagabond, not 
only throneless but houseless ; every evening sun set upon a change ; 
every morning dawned upon some new convulsion ; in short, the 
whole political globe quivered as with an earthquake, and who 
could tell what venerable monument was not to shiver beneath the 
splendid, frightful, and reposeless heavings of the French volcano? 
What gave Europe peace, and England safety, amid this palsy of her 
Princes ? Was it not the Landwehr and the Landstnun and the Levy 
en Masse ? Was it not the people ? — that first and last, and best, 
and noblest, as well as safest security of a virtuous government. It 
is a glorious lesson ; she onght to study it in this hour of safety ; 
but should she not — 

" Oh, woe be to the Prince who rules by fear, 
When clanger comes upon him ! " 

She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom ; I expect it from her 
policy ; I claim it from her justice ; I demand it from her gratitude. 
She must at length see that there is a gross mistake in the manage- 
ment of Ireland. No wise man ever yet imagined injustice to be his 
interest ; and the minister who thinks he serves a state by upholding 
the most irritating and the most impious of all monopolies will one 
day or other find himself miserably mistaken. This system of per- 
secution is not the way to govern this country ; at least, to govern 
it with any happiness to itself, or advantage to its rulers. Centuries 
have proved its total inefiiciency ; and if it be continued for centuries, 
the proofs will be but multiplied. Why, however, should I blame 
the English people, when I see our own representatives so shamefully 
negligent of our interest? The other day, for instance, when Mr. 
Peel introduced, aye, and passed too, his three newly invented 
penal bills, to the necessity of which, every assizes in Ireland, and 
as honest a judge as ever dignified or redeemed the ermine, has given 
the refutation ; why was it that no Irish member rose in his place to 
vindicate his country ? Where were the nominal representatives of 
Ireland? Where were the renegade revilers of the demagogue? 
Where were the noisy proclaimers of the board ? What, was there 



69S TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

not one voice to own the country? Was the patriot of 1782 an 
assenting auditor? Were our hundred zVnzej'an^s mute and motion- 
less — "quite cbopfallen? " or is it only when Ireland is slandered, 
and her motives misrepresented, and her oppressions are basely and 
falsely denied, that their venal throats are ready to echo the chorus 
of ministerial calumny? Oh, I should not have to ask those ques- 
tions, if in the lute contest for this city, you had prevailed, and sent 
Hutchinson into Parliament ; he would have risen, though alone, as 
I have often seen him — riciier not less in hereditary fame, than in 
personal accomplishments ; the ornament of Ireland as she is, the 
solitary remnant of what she was. If slander dare asperse her, 
it would not have done so with impunity. He would have encour- 
aged the timid ; he Avould have shamed the recreant ; and thongh he 
could not save us from chains, he would at least have shielded us from 
calumny. Let me hope that his absence shall be but of short dura- 
tion, and that this city will earn an additional claim to the gratitude 
of the country, by electing him her representative. I scarcely know 
bim but as a public man ; and considering the state to which w^c are 
reduced by the apostacy of some, and the ingratitude of others, and 
venality of more, — I say you should inscribe the conduct of such a 
man in ihc manuals of your devotion, and in the primers of your 
children ; but above all, you should act on it yourselves. Let me 
entreat of you, above all things to sacrifice any personal differences 
among yourselves, for the great cause in which 30U are embarked. 
Iveniember the contest is for your children, your country, and your 
God ; and remember also, that the day of Irish union will be the 
nalal day of Irish liberty. When your own Parliament (which I 
trust in heaven we may yet see again) voted you the right of fran- 
chise, and the right of purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to 
yourselves, a certainty of your emancipation. My friends, farewell ! 
This has been a most unexpected meeting to me ; it has been our 
first — it may be our last. I can never forget the enthusiasm of this 
reception. I am too much affected by it to make professions; but, 
believe me, no matter where I may be driven by the whim of my 
destiny, you shall find me one, in whom change of place shall create 
no change of principle; one whose memory must perish ere he. 
forgets his country ; whose heart must be cold when it beats not for 
her happiness. 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 699 



A Speech 

Delivered at a Dinner given on Dinas Island, est the Lake 

OF KiLLARNET, ON Mr. PhILLIPS' HeALTH BEING GIVEN, TO- 
GETHER WITH THAT OP Mr. Payne, a young American. 



^^T is not with the vain hope of returning by woi-ds the kindnesses 
§^ which have been literally showered on me during the short 
p< period of our acquaintance, that I now interrupt, for a moment, 
•L the tlow of your festivity. Indeed, it is not necessary ; an 
Irishman needs no requital for his hospitality ; its generous impulse 
is the instinct of his nature, and the very consciousness of the act 
carries its recompense along with it. But, sir, there are sensations 
excited by an allusion in your toast, under the influence of which 
silence would be impossible. To be associated with Mr. Payne 
must be, to any one who regards private virtues and personal ac- 
complishments, a source of peculiar pride ; and that feeling is not a 
little enlianced in me by a recollection of the country to which we 
are indeljted for his qualifications. Indeed, the mention of America 
has never failed to fill me with the most lively emotious. In my 
earliest infancy, that tender season when impressions, at once the 
most permanent and the most powerful, are likely to be excited, the 
story of her then recent struggle raised a throb in every heart tliat 
loved liberty, and wrung a reluctant tribute even from discomfited 
oppression. I saw her spurning alike the luxuries that would ener- 
vate, and the legions that would intimidate ; dashing from her lips 
the poisoned cup of European servitude, and, through all the vicissi- 
tudes of her protracted conflict, displaying a magnanimity that defied 
misfortune, and a moderation that gave new grace to victory. It 
was the first vision of my childhood ; it will descend with me to the 
grave. But if as a man, I venerate the mention of America, what 



700 TKEASTIRY OF ELOQUENCE. 

must be my feelings towards her as an Irishman. Never, oh never, 
■while memory remains, can Ireland forget the home of her emigrant 
and the asylum of her exile. No matter whether their sorrows 
sprung from the errors of enthusiasm, or the realities of suffei-ing — 
from fancy or infliction ; that must be reserved for the scrutiny of 
those whom the lapse of time shall acquit of partiality. It is for the 
men of other ages to investigate and recoi'd it ; but surely it is for 
the men of every age to hail the hospitality that received the shel- 
terless, and love the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. Search 
creation round, where can you find a country that presents so sub- 
lime a view, so interesting an anticijoation ? What noble institutions ! 
What a comprehensive policy ! What a wise equalization of every 
political advantage ! The oppressed of all countries, the martyrs of 
every creed, the innocent victim of despotic arrogance or supersti- 
tious phrenzy, may there find refuge ; his industiy encouraged, his 
piety respected, his ambition animated ; with no restraint but those 
laws which are the same to all, and no distinction but that whicli his 
merit may originate. Who can deny that the existence of such a 
country presents a subject for human congratulation ! Who can 
deny that its gigantic advancement offers a field for the most rational 
conjecture ! At the end of the very next century, if she proceeds 
as she seems to promise, what a wondrous spectacle may she not 
exhibit ! Who shall say for what purpose a mysterious Providence 
may not have designed her ! Who shall say that when in its follies 
or its crimes, the old world may have interred all the pride of its 
power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not 
find its destined renovation in the new ! For myself, I have no 
doubt of it. I have not the least doubt that when our temples and 
our trophies shall have mouldered into dust ; when the glories of 
our name shall be but the legend of tradition, and the light of our 
achievements only live in song ; philosophy will rise again in the 
sky of her Fi-anklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washing- 
ton. Is this the vision of romantic fancy? Is it even improbable? 
Is it half so improbable as the events, which, for the last twenty 
years have rolled like successive tides over the sui'face of the Euro- 
pean woi'ld, each erasing the impressions that preceded it? Thou- 
sands upon thousands, sir, I know there are, who will consider this 
supposition as wild and whimsical ; but they have dwelt with little 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 701 

reflection upon the records of the past. They have but ill observed 
the never-ceasing progress of national rise and national ruin. They 
form their judgment on the deceitful stability of the pi'esent hour, 
never considering the innumerable monarchies and republics, in 
former days, apparently as permanent, their very existence become 
now the subjects of speculation — I had almost said of scepticism. I 
appeal to history ! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, 
can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of an 
universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, 
or all the establishments of this world's wisdom, secure to empire 
the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought sconce; 
yet the land of Priam lives only in song ! Thebes thought so once, 
yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but 
as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate ! So thought 
Palmjrra — where is she? So thought Persepolis, and now — 

"Yon waste, where roaming lions howl, 
Yon aisle, where moaus the grey-eyed owl 
Shows the proud Persian's great abode. 
Where sceptered once, an earthly god, 
His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime, 
Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime." 

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan, yet Le- 
onidas's is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by 
the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman ! In his hurried march, 
Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vani- 
ties, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the 
very impression of his footsteps ! The days of their glory are as if 
they had never been ; and the island that was then a speck, rude 
and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their 
commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the 
eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards ! Who 
shall say, then, contemplathig the past, that England, proud and 
potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the 
young America yet soar to be what Athens was ! Who shall say, 
when the European columns shall have mouldered, and the night of 
barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may 
not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the 
ascendant ! 



702 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human operations, and such 
the unsubstantial mockery of human pride. But I should, perhaps, 
apologize for this digression. The tombs are, at best, a sad although 
an instructive subject. At all events, they are ill suited to such an 
hour as this. I shall endeavour to atone for it, by turning to a 
theme which tombs cannot inurn, or revolution alter. It is the cus- 
tom of your board, and a noble one it is, to deck the cup of the gay 
with the garland of the great ; and surely, even in the eyes of its 
deity, his grape is not the less lovely when glowing beneath the foli- 
age of the palm-tree and the myrtle. Allow me to add one flower 
to. the chaplet, which, though it sprang in America, is no exotic. 
Virtue planted it, and it is naturalized everywhere. I see you an- 
ticipate me ; I see you concur with me, that it matters very little 
what immediate spot may be the birth-place of such a man as Wash- 
ington. No people can claim, no country can appropriate him ; the 
boon of Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, and his 
residence creation. Tiiough it was the defeat of our arms, and the 
disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he had 
his origin. If the heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet, 
when the storm passed, how pure was the climate that it cleared ; 
bow bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet which it re- 
vealed to us ! In the production of Washington, it does really ap- 
pear as if nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that 
all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies prepar- 
atory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances no doubt there 
were ; splendid exemplifications of some single qualifications. Csesai 
was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient; but it 
was reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, and like the 
lovely clief d'cEitvi-e of the Grecian artist, to exhibit in one glow of 
associated beauty, the pride of every model, and the perfection of 
every master. As a General, he marshalled the peasant into a vet- 
eran, and supplied by discipline the absence of experience ; as a 
statesman, he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most com- 
prehensive system of general advantage ; and such was the wisdom 
of his views, and the philosophy of his counsels, that to the soldier 
and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage ! a con- 
queror, he was untainted with the crime of blood ; a revolutionist. 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 703 

the contest, and his country called him to the command. Liberty 
unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, victory returned it. If he 
had paused here, history might have doubted what station to assign 
him, whether at the head of her citizens or her soldiers, her heroes, 
or her patriots. But the last glorious act crowns his career, and ban- 
ishes all hesitation. Who, like Washington, after having emanci- 
pated a hemisphere, resigned its crown, and preferred the retirement 
of domestic life to the adoration of a land he might be almost said 
to have created? 

" How shall we rank thee upon glory's page, 
Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage; 
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee, 
Far less than all thou hast forborne to be ! " 

Such, Sir, is the testimony of one not to be accused of partiality 
in his estimate of America. Happy, proud America ! the lightnings 
of heaven yielded to your philosophy ! The temptations of earth 
could not seduce your patriotism ! 

I have the honor. Sir, of proposing to you as a toast, The immortal 
KEMOKr OF George Washington. 



704- TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 



A Speech 

Deliveeed at an Aggregate Meeting of the Eoman Catholics 
OF the County and City of Dublin. 



1^«AVING taken, in the discussions on your question, such humble 
^M§ share as was allotted to my station and capacity, I may be 
ujjkt) permitted to ofier my ardent congratulations at the proud 
;^^« pinnacle on which it this day reposes. After having com- 
•^ bated calumnies the most atrocious, sophistries the most 
plausible, and perils the most appalling that slander could invent or 
ingenuity could devise or power array against you, I at length behold 
the assembled rank and wealth and talent of the Catholic body oifer- 
ing to the legislature that appeal which cannot be rejected, if there 
be a Power in heaven to redress injury, or a spirit on earth to ad- 
minister justice. No matter what may be the depreciations of faction 
or of bigotry ; this earth never presented a more ennobling spectacle 
than that of a Christian country suffering for her religion with the 
patience of a martyr, and suing for her liberties with the expostula- 
tions of a philosopher ; reclaiming the bad by her piety ; refuting 
the bigoted by her practice ; wielding the Ajiostle's weapons in the 
patriot's cause, and at length, laden with chains and with laurels, 
seeking from the country she had saved, the constitution she had 
shielded ! Little did I imagine, that in such a state of j'our cause, we 
should be called together to counteract the impediments to its success, 
created not by its enemies, but by those supposed to be its friends. 
It is a melancholy occasion ; but melancholy as it is, it must be met, 
and met with the fortitude of men struggling in the sacred cause of 
liberty. I do not allude to the proclamation of your Board ; of that 
Board I never was a member, so I can speak impartially. It con- 
tained much talent, some learning, many virtues. It was valuable 
on that account ; but it was doubly valuable as being a vehicle for 



CIIAKLES PHILLIPS. 705 

the individual sentiments of any Catholic, and for the aggregate 
sentiments of every Catholic. Those who seceded from it do not 
rememher that, individually, they are nothing ; that as a body they 
are everything. It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled sycophant, 
whom the bigots dread, or the parliament respects ! No, it is the 
body, the numbers, the rank, the property, the genius, the perse- 
verance, the education, but, above all, the Union of the Catholics. 
I am far from defending every measure of the Buard — perhaps I 
condemn some of its measures even more than those who have seceded 
from it; but is it a reason, if a general makes one mistake, that his 
followers are to desert him, especially when the contest is for all that 
is dear or valuable? No doubt the Board had its errors. Show me 
the human institution which has not. Let the man, then, who de- 
nounces it, prove himself superior to humanity, before he triumphs 
in his accusation. I am surry for its suppression. When I consider 
the animals who are in office around us, the act does not surprise me ; 
but I confess, even from them, the manner did, and the time chosen 
did, most sensibly. 1 did not expect it on the very hour when the 
news of universal peace was first promulgated, and on the anniver- 
sary of the only British monarch's birth, who ever gave a boon to 
this distracted country. 

You will excuse this digression, rendered in some degree necessary. 
I shall now confine myself exclusively to your resolution, which de- 
termines on the immediate presentation of your petition, and censures 
the neglect of any discussion on it by your advocates during the last 
session of Parliament. You have a right to demand most fully 
the reasons of any man who dissents from Mr. Grattan. I will give 
you mine explicitly. But I shall first state the reasons which he has 
given for the postponement of your question. I shall do so out of 
respect to him, if indeed it can be called respect to quote those sen- 
timents, which on their very mention must excite your ridicule. 
Mr. Grattan presented your petition, and, on moving that it should 
lie where so many preceding ones have lain, namely, on tlie table, he 
declared it to be his intention to move for no discussion. Here in 
the first place, I think Mr. Grattan wrong ; he got that .petition, 
if not on the express, at least on the implied condition of having it 
immediately discussed. There was not a man at the aggregate 
meetinii at which it was adopted, who did not expect a discussion on 



706 TREASURE OF ELOQUENCE. 

the very first opportunity. Mr. Grattan, however, was angry at 
"suggestions." I do not think Mr. Grattan, of all men, had any 
right to be so angry at receiving that which every English member 
was willing to receive, and was actually receiving from any English 
corn-factor. Mr. Grattan was also angry at our " violence." 
Neither do I think he had any occasion to be so squeamish at what 
he calls our violence. There was a day, when Mr. Grattan would not 
have spurned our suggestions, and there was also a day when he was 
fifty-fold more intemperate than any of his oppressed countrymen, 
whom he now holds up to the English people as so unconstitu- 
tionally violent. A pretty way, forsooth, for your advocate to 
commence conciliating a foreign auditory in favor of your petition. 
Mr. Grattan, however, has fulfilled his own prophecy, that "an oak 
of the forest is too old to be transplanted at fifty," and our fears 
that an Irish native would soon lose its raciness in an English 
atmosphere. "It is not my intention," says he, "to move for a dis- 
cussion at present." Why? " Great obstacles have been removed." 
That 's his first reason. "I am, however," says he, "still ardent." 
Ardent ! Why it strikes me to be a very novel kind of ardor, which 
toils till it has removed every impediment, and then pauses at tho 
prospect of its victory. "And I am of opinion," he continues, 
"that any immediate discussion would be the height of precipitation" ; 
that is, after having removed the impediments, he pauses in his path, 
declaring he is "ardent": and after centuries of suffering, when you 
press for a discussion, he protests that he considers you monstrously 
precipitate ! Now is not that a fair translation? Why really if we 
did not know Mr. Grattan, we should be almost tempted to think 
that he was quoting from the ministry. With the exception of one 
or two plain, downwright, sturdy, unblushing bigots, who opposed 
you because you were Christians, and declared they did so, this was 
the cant of every man who afi"ected liberality. "Oh, I declare," 
they say, "they may not be cannibals, though they are Catholics ; ;ind 
I would be very glad to vote for them, but this is no (hue." "Oh 
no," says Bragge Bathurst, "it's no time. What! in time of war! 
Why it looks like bullying us ! " Very well : next comes the peace, 
and what say onv friends the opposition ? " Oh I I declare peace ia 
no time, it looks so like persuading us." For mj part, serious as 
the subject is, it afiects me with the very same ridicule with which I 



CHAKLES PHILLIPS. 707 

see I have so unconsciously affected you. I will tell you a story of 
"which it reminds me. It is told of the celebrated Charles Fox. Far 
be it from me, however, to mention that name with levity. As he 
was a great man, I revere him ; as he was a good man, I love him. 
He had as Avise a head as ever paused to deliberate ; he had as sweet 
a tongue as ever gave the words of wisdom utterance ; and he had a 
heart so stamped with the immediate impress of the Divinity, that its 
very errors might _be traced to the excess of its benevolence. I had 
almost forgot the story. Fox was a man of genius — of course, he 
was poor. Poverty is a reproach to no man ; to such a man as Fox, 
I think it was a pride : for if he chose to trafEc with his principles ; 
if lie chose to gamble with his conscience, how easily might he have 
been rich? I guessed j'our answer. It would be hard, indeed, if 
you did not believe that in England talents might find a purchaser, 
who have seen in Ireland how easily a blockhead may swindle himself 
into preferment. Juvenal says that the greatest misfortune attend- 
ant on poverty is ridicule. Fox found out a greater — debt. The 
Jews called on him for payment. " Ah, my dear friends," says Fox, 
" I admit the principle ; I owe you money, but what time is this, 
when I am going upon business?" Just so our friends admit the 
l^rinciple ; they owe you emancipation, but war's no time. Well, 
the Jews departed just as you did. They returned to the charge : 
"What ! " cries Fox, " is this a time, when I am engaged on an ap- 
pointment?" What! say our friends, is this a time v,hcn all the 
world's at peace? The Jews departed; but the end of it was, Fox, 
with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was as much in debt as he was, 
shut themselves up in garrison. The Jews used to surround his 
habitation at da^'light, and poor Fox regularly put his head out of 
the window, with tliis question; "Gentlemen, are you /W-Iiunting 
or //aj'e-hunting, this morning?" His pleasantry mitigated the very 
Jews. "Well, well. Fox, now you have always admitted the prin- 
ciple, but protested against the iiine; we will give you your own 
time, only just fix some final day for our repayment." "Ah, 
my dear Moses," replies Fox, "now this is friendly. I will take you 
at your word ; I will fix a day, and as it's to be a final day, what 
would you thiuk of the day of judgment?" " That will be too busy 
a day with us." " Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, 
let us settle the day after." 



708 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Thus it is, between tlie war inexpediency of Bragge Batliurst and 
the peace inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may expect your eman- 
cipation-bill pretty much about the time that Fox settled for the 
payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, however, though he scorn- 
ed to take your suggestions, took the suggestions of your friends. 
" I have consulted," says he, " my right honorable friends ! " Oh, 
all friends, all right honorable! Now this it is to trust the interest 
of a people into the hands of a party. You must know, in parlia- 
mentary pai'lauce, these right honorable friends mean a party. 
There are few men so contemptible, as not to have a party. The 
minister has his party. The opposition have their party. The 
saints, for there are saints in the House of Commons, lucusanon 
hicendo, the saints have their party. Every one has his party. I 
had forgotten — Ireland has no 2Mrty. Such are the reasons, if 
reasons they can be called, which Mr. Grattan has given for the 
postjDonement of your question ; and I sincerely say, if they had 
come from any other man, I would not have condescended to have 
given them an answer. He is indeed I'eported to have said that he 
has others in reserve, which he did not think it necessary to detail. 
If those which he reserved were like those he delivered, I do not 
dispute the prudence of keeping them to himself; but as we have 
not the gift of prophecy, it is not easy for us to answer them, until 
he shall deign to give them to his constituents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged I'easons for the post- 
ponement, it is quite natural that you should require what my 
reasons are for urging the discussion. I shall give them candidly. 
They are at once so simple and explicit, it is quite impossible that 
the meanest capacity amongst you should not comprehend them. I 
would urge the instant discussion, because discussion has always 
been of use to you ; because, upon every discussion you have gained 
converts out of doors ; and because, upon every discussion within 
the doors of pai'liament, your enemies have diminished and 3'our 
friends have increased. Now, is not that a strong reason for con- 
tinuing your discussions? This may be assertion. Aye, but I will 
prove it. In order to convince you of the argument as referring to 
the country, I need but point to the state of the public mind now 
upon the subject, and that which existed in the memory of the 
youngest. I myself remember the blackest and the basest universal 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 709 

denunciations against your ci'eed, and the vilest anatliemas against 
any man who would grant you an iota. Now, every man affects to 
be liberal, and the only question with some is the time of the con- 
cession ; with others, the extent of the concessions ; with many, the 
nature of the securities you should afford; whilst a great multitude, 
in which I am proud to class myself, think that your emancipation 
should be immediate, universal, and unrestricted. Such has been 
the progress of the human mind out of doors, in consequence of the 
powerful eloquence, argument, and policy elicited by those discus- 
sions which your friends now have, for the first time, found out to 
be precipitate. Now let us see what has been the effect produced 
ivUkin the doors of Parliament. For twenty years you were silent, 
and of course you were neglected. The consequence was most 
natural. Why should Parliament grant jirivileges to men who did 
not think those privileges worth the solicitation? Then rose your 
agitators, as they are called by those bigots who are trembling at 
the effect of their arguments on the community, and who, as a mat- 
ter of course, take every opportunity of calumniating them. Ever 
since that period your cause has been advancing. Take the numer- 
ical proportions in the House of Commons on each subsequent dis- 
cussion. In 1805, the iirst time it was brought forward in the 
Imperial legislature, and it was then aided by the powerful eloquence 
of Fox, there was a majority against even taking your claims into 
consideration, of no less a number than 212. It Avas an appalling 
omen. In 1808, however, on the next discussion, that majority 
Avns diminished to 163. In 1810 it decreased to 104. In 1811 it 
dwindled to 64, and at length in 1812, on the motion of Mr. Can- 
ning, and it is not a little remarkable that the first successful exer- 
tion in your favor was made by an English member, your enemies 
fled the field, and you had the triumphant majoi-ity to support you 
of 129 ! Now, is this not demonstration? What becomes now of 
those who say discussion has not been of use to you : but I need 
not have resorted to ai-ithmetical calculation. Men become ashamed 
of combating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail ; 
it forces its way with the fire and the precision of the morning sim- 
b.am. Vapors may impede the infimcy of its progress ; but the 
very resistance that would check only condenses and concentrates 
it, until at length it goes forth in the fullness of its meridian, all life 



710 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

and sight and lustre, the minutest objects visible in its refulgence. 
You lived for centuries on the vegetable diet and eloquent silence 
of this Pythagorean policy ; and the consequence was, when you 
thought yourselves mightily dignified and mightily interesting, the 
whole world was laughing at your philosophy, and sending its aliens 
to take possession of your birthright. I have given you a good 
reason for urging your discussion, by having shown you that dis- 
cussion has always gained you proselytes. But is it the time? says 
Mr. Grattan. Yes, sir, it is tlie lime, peculiarly the time, unless 
indeed the great question of Irish liberty is to be reserved as a 
weapon in the hands of a party to wield against the weakness of the 
British minister. But why should I delude j'ou by talking about 
time! Oh! there will never be a time with Bigotry ! She has uo 
head, and cannot think ; she has no heart, and cannot feel; when 
she moves, it is in wrath ; when she pauses, it is amid ruin ; her 
prayers are curses, her communion is death, her vengeance is eter- 
nity, her decalogue is written in the blood of her victims ;' and if 
she stoops for a moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some 
kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for keener rapine, and 
replume her wing for a more sanguinary desolation ! I appeal from 
this infernal, grave-stalled fury, I appeal to the good sense, to the 
policy, to the gratitude of England; and I make my appeal pecu- 
liarly at this moment, when all the illustrious potentates of Europe 
are assembled together in the British capital, to hold the great festi- 
val of universal peace and universal emancipation. Perhaps when 
France, flushed with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated by 
enmity ; her avowed aim an universal conquest, her means the 
confederated resources of the continent, her guide the greatest mili- 
tary genius a nation fertile in prodigies has produced — a man who 
seemed born to invert what had been regular, to defile what had 
been venerable, to crush what had been established, and to create, 
as if by a magic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the paupers he 
Lad commanded into kings, and based by the thrones he had 
crumbled in his caprices — perhaps when such a power, so led, so 
organized, and so incited, was in its noon of triumi^h, the timid 
might tremble even at the charge that would save, or the concession 
that would strengthen. But now,— her allies faithless, her con- 
quests despoiled, her territory dismembered, her legions defeated, 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 71 X 

her leader dethroned, and her reigning prince our ally by treat}', 
our debtor by gratitude, and our inalienable friend by every solemn 
obligation of civilized society, — the objection is our strength, and 
the obstacle our battlement. Perhaps when the Pope was in the 
power of our enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry might 
have rested on it. The inference was false as to Ireland, and it was 
ungenerous as to Rome. The Irish Catholic, firm in his faith, bows 
to the Pontiff's spiritual supremacy, but he would spurn the Pontiff's 
temporal interference. If, with the spirit of an earthly domination, 
he were to issue to-morrow his despotic mandate. Catholic Ireland 
Avith one voice would answer him : " Sire, we bow with reverence 
to 3'our spiritual mission : the descendant of Saint Peter, we freely 
acknowledge you the head of our church, and the organ of our creed : 
but, Sire, if we have a church, we cannot forget that we also have a 
country ; and when you attempt to convert j^our mitre into a crown, 
and 3^our crozier into a sceptre, you degrade the majesty of your 
high delegation, and grossly miscalculate upon our acquiescence. 
No foreign power shall regulate the allegiance which we owe to our 
sovereign ; it was the fault of our fathers that one Pope forged our 
fetters ; it will be our own, if we allow them to be riveted by 
another." Such would be the answer of universal Ireland ; such 
was her answer to the audacious menial, who dared to dictate her 
unconditional submission to an act of Parliament which emancipated 
by penalties, and redressed by insult. But, sir, it never would 
have entered into the contemplation of the Pope to have assumed 
such an authority. His character was a sufficient shield against the 
imputation, and his policy must have taught him that, in grasping at 
the shadow of a temporal power, he should but risk the reality of 
his ecclesiastical supremacy. 

Thus was Parliament doubly guarded against a foreign usurpa- 
tion. The people upon whom it was to act deprecate its authority, 
and the power to which it was imputed a)>hors its ambition ; the Pope 
Avould not exert it if he could, and the people would not obey it if 
he did. Just [)recisely upon the same foundation rested the asper- 
sions which were cast upon your creed. How did experience justify 
them? Did Lord Wellington find that religious faith made any 
difference amid the thunder of the battle? Did the Spanish soldier 
desert his colors because his General believed not in the real 



712 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

presence ? Did the brave Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate 
about mysteries ? Or what comparison did the hero draw between 
the policy of England and the piety of Spain, when at one 
moment he led the heterodox legions to victory, and the very next 
was obliged to fly from his own native flag, waving defiance on the 
walls of Burgos, where the Irish exile planted and sustained it? 
What must he have felt when in a foreign land he was obliged to 
connnand brother against brother, to raise the sword of blood, and 
drown the cries of nature with the artillery of death? What were 
the sensations of our hapless exiles Mhen they recognized the fea- 
tures of their long-lost country ? when they heard the accents of the 
tongue they loved, or caught the cadence of the simple melody 
which once lulled them to sleep within a mother's arms, and cheered 
the darling circle they must behold no more? Alas, how the poor 
banished heart delights in the memoiy that song associates ! He 
heard it in happier days, when the parents he adored, the maid he 
loved, the friends of his soul, and the green fields of his infancy were 
round him ; when his labors were illumined with the sunshine of the 
heart, and his humble hut was a palace — for it was home. His soul 
is full, his eye suffused, he bends from the battlements to catch the 
cadence, when his death-shot, sped by a brother's hand, lays him in 
his grave— the victim of a code calling itself Christian ! Who shall 
say, heart-rending as it is, this picture is from fancy? Has it not 
occurred in Spain ? May it not at this instant be acting in America ? 
Is there any country in the universe in which these brave exiles of a 
barI)arous bigotry are not to be found refuting the calumnies that 
banished and rewarding the hospitality that received them? Yet 
England, enlightened England, who sees them in every field of the 
old world and the new, defending the various flags of every faith, 
supports the injustice of her exclusive constitution by branding upon 
them the ungenerous accusation of an exclusive creed ! England, the 
ally of Catholic Portugal, the ally of Catholic Spain, the all}' of 
Catholic France, the friend of the Pope ! England, wlio seated a 
Catholic bigot in INIadrid ! who convoyed a Catholic Braganza to the 
Brazils ! wiio enthroned a Catholic Bourbon in Paris ! who guaran- 
teed a Catholic establishment in Canada ! who gave a constitution to 
Catholic Hanover ! England, who searches the globe for Catholic 
grievances to redress and Catholic princes to restore, will not trust 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 7I3, 

the Catholic at home, who speuds his blood and treasure in her ser- 
vice ! Is this generous ? Is this consistent? Is it just? Is it even 
politic ? Is it the act of a wise country to fetter the energies of an 
entire population? Is it the act of a Christian country to do it in 
the name of God? Is it politic in a government to degrade part of 
the body by which it is supported, or pious to make Providence a 
party to their degradation ? There are societies in England for dis- 
countenancing vice; there are Christian associations for distributing 
the Bible ; there are voluntary missions for converting the heathen ; 
but Ireland, the seat of their government, the stay of their empire, 
their associate by all the ties of nature and of interest, how has she 
benefited by the gospel of which they boast ? Has the sweet spirit 
of Christianity appeared on our plains in the character of her pre- 
cepts, breathing the air and robed in the beauties of the world to 
which she would lead us ; with no argument but love, no look but 
peace, no wealth but piety ; her creed comprehensive as the arch of 
heaven, and her charities bounded but by the cii'cle of creation ? Or 
has she been let loose amongst us in form of fury and in act of 
demon, her heart festered with the fires of hell, her hands clotted 
with the gore of earth, withering alike in her repose and in her 
progress, her path apparent by the print of blood and her pause de- 
noted by the expanse of desolation ? Gospel of Heaven ! is this thy 
herald? God of the imiverse ! is this thy hand-maid? Christian of 
the ascendancy ! how would you answer the disbelieving infidel, if 
he asked you, should he estimate the Christian doctrine by the 
Christian practice ; if he dwelt upon those periods when the human 
victim writhed upon the altar of the peaceful Jesus, and the cross, 
crimsoned with his blood, became little better than a stake to the 
sacrifice of his votaries ; if he pointed to Ireland, where the word of 
peace was the war-whoop of destruction ; where the son was bribed 
against the father and the plunder of the parent's property was made 
a bounty on the recantation of the parent's creed ; where the mai'ch 
of the human mind was stayed in His name who had inspired it witli 
reason, and any effort to liberate a fellow-creature from his intellec- 
tual bondage was sure to be recompensed by the dungeon or the 
scaffold ; where ignorance was so long a legislative command, and 
piety legislative crime ; where religion was placed as a barrier be- 
tween the sexes, and the intercourse of nature was pronounced felony 



714 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

by law ; where Gcxl's worship was an act of stealth, and His minis- 
ters sought amongst the savages of the woods that sanctuary which a 
nominal civilization had denied them ; where at this instant conscience 
is made to blast every hope of genius and every energy of ambition ; 
and the Catholic who would rise to any station of trust must, in the 
face of his country, deny the faith of his fathers ; where the prefei"- 
ments of earth are only to be obtained by the forfeiture of Heaven? 

" Unprized are her sons till tliey learn to betray, 

Undistinguished they live if they shame not their sires; 
And the torch that would light them to dignity's way 

Must be caught from the pile where their country expires?" 

How, let me ask, how would the Christian zealot droop beneath this 
catalogue of Christian qualifications? But, thus it is, when secta- 
rians diifer on account of mysteries ; in the heat and acrimony of 
the causeless contest, religion, the glory of one world, and the guide 
of another, drifts from the splendid circle in which she shone, in the 
comet-maze of uncertainty and error. The code, against which you 
petition, is a vile compound of impiety and impolicy : impiety, be- 
cause it debases in the name of God ; impolicy, because it disquali- 
fies under pretence of government. If we are to argue fi'om the 
services of Protestant Ireland, to the losses sustained by the bond- 
age of Catholic Ireland, and I do not see wb}^ we should not, the 
state which continues such a system is guihy of little less than a 
political suicide. It matters little where the Protestant Irishman 
has been employed ; whether with Burke, wielding the senate with 
his eloquence \ with Castlereagh, guiding the cabinet with his coun- 
sels ; with Barry, enriching the arts by his pencil ; with Swift, adorn- 
ing literature by his genius ; with Goldsmith or with Moore, softening 
the heart by their melody ; or with Wellington, chaining victory at 
his car, he may boldly challenge the competition of the world. Op- 
pressed and impoverished as our country is, every muse has cheered, 
every art adorned, and every conquest crowned her. Plundered, 
she was not poor, for her character enriched ; attainted, she was not 
titleless, for her services ennobled ; literally outlawed into eminence, 
and fettered into fame, the fields of her exile were immortalized by 
her deeds, and the links of her chain became decorated by her lau- 
rels. Is this fancy, or is it fact? Is there a department in the state 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 715 

in which Irish genius does not possess a predominance ? Is there a 
conquest which it does not achieve, or a dignity which it does not 
adorn? At this instant, is there a country in the world to which 
England has not deputed an Irishman as her repi'esentative? She 
has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir Gore Ousely to Isjiahan, Lord 
Stuart to Vienna, Lord Castlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wel- 
lesly to Madrid, Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the 
Brazils, Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wellington to Paris — all 
Irishmen ! Whether it results from accident or from merit, can there 
be a more cutting sarcasm on the policy of England ! Is it not di- 
rectly saying to her, "here is a country from one-fifth of whose 
people you depute the agents of your most august delegation, the 
remaining four-fifths of which by your odious bigotry, you incapaci- 
tate from an}' station of oflice or of trust ! " It is adding all that is 
weak in impolicy to all that is wicked in ingratitude. What is her 
apology? Will she pretend that the Deity imitates her injustice, and 
incapacitates the intellect as she has done the creed ? After making 
Providence a pretence for her code, will she also make it a party to 
her crime, and arraign the universal spirit of partiality in his dis- 
pensations? Is she not content with him as a Protestant God, un- 
less he also consents to become a Catholic demon ? But, if the 
charge were true ; if the Irish Catholic were imbruted and debased, 
Ireland's conviction would be England's crime, and your answer to 
the bigot's charge should be the bigot's conduct. What, then ! is 
this the result of six centuries of your government? Is this the 
connection which j'ou called a benefit to Ireland ? Have your pro- 
tecting laws so debased them, that the very privilege of reason is 
worthless in their possession? Shame! oh, shame! to the govern- 
ment where the people are barbarous ? The day is not distant when 
they made the education of a Catholic a crime ; and yet they arraign 
the Catholic for ignorance ! The day is not distant when they pro- 
claimed the celebration of the Catholic worship a felony, and yet 
they complain that the Catholic is not moral ! What folly ! Is it 
to be expected that the people are to emerge in a moment from the 
stupor of a protracted degradation? There is not perhaps to be 
traced upon the map of national misfortune, a spot so truly and so 
tediously deplorable as Ireland. Other lands, no doubt, have had 
their calamities. To the horrors of revolution, the miseries of des- 



716 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

potisni, the scourges of anarchy, they have in their turus been sub- 
ject. But it has been only in their turns ; the visitations of woe, 
though severe, have not been eternal ; the hour of probation, or of 
punishment, has passed away ; and the tempest, after having emptied 
the vial of its wrath, has given place to the serenity of the calm and 
of the sunshine. Has this been the case with respect to our mis- 
erable country ? Is there, save in the visionary world of tradition — 
is there in the progress, either of record or recollection, one verdant 
spot in the desert of our annals, where patriotism can find repose, 
or philanthi'opy refreshment? Oh, indeed, posterit}" will pause 
with wonder on the melancholy page which shall portray the story 
of a people amongst whom the policy of man, has waged an eternal 
warfare with the providence of God, blighting into deformity all 
that was beauteous, and into famine all that was abundant. I re- 
peat, however, the charge to be false.. The Catholic mind in Ireland 
has made advances scared}' to be hoped in the short interval of its 
partial emancipation. But what encouragement has the Catholic 
parent to educate his offspring? Suppose he sends his son, the hope 
of his pride, and the wealth of his heart, into the army ; the child 
justifies his parental anticipation ; he is moral in his habits, he is 
strict in his discipline, he is daring in the field, and temperate at the 
board, and patient in the camp; the first in the charge, and the last 
in the retreat ; with a hand to achieve, and a head to guide, and 
temper to conciliate ; he combines the skill of Wellington with the 
clemency of Cajsar and the courage of Turenne — yet he can never 
rise — he is a Catholic! Take another instance. Suppose him at 
the bar. He has spent his nights at the lamp, and his days in the 
forum ; the rose has withered from his cheek mid the drudgery of 
form; the spirit has fainted in his heart mid the anal3sis of crime; 
he has foregone the pleasures of his j'outh and the associates of his 
heart, and all the fairy enchantments in which fancy may have wrap- 
ped him. Alas! for what? Though genius flashed from his eye, 
and eloquence rolled from his lips ; though he spoke with the tongue 
of Tully, and argued with the learning of Coke, and thought with 
the purity of Fletcher, he can never rise — he is a Catholic! Jlerci- 
ful God ! what a state of society is this, in which thy worship is 
interposed as a disqualification upon thy Providence ! Behold, in a 
word, the effects of the code against which you petition ; it dis- 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 717 

heartens exertion, it disqualifies merit, it debilitates the state, it 
degrades the God-head, it disobeys Christianity, it makes religion 
an article of traffic, and its founder a monopoly ; and for ages it has 
reduced a country, blessed with every beauty of nature, and every 
bounty of Providence, to a state unparalleled under any constitution 
professing to be free, or any government pretending to be civilized. 
To justify this enormity there is now no argument. Now is the time 
to concede with dignity that which was never denied without injustice. 
Who can tell how soon we may require all the zeal of our united 
population to secure our very existence ? Who can argue upon the 
continuance of this calm ? Have we not seen the labor of ages over- 
thrown, and the whim of a day erected on its ruins ; establishments 
the most solid, withering at a word, and visions the most whimsical 
realized at a wish ? crowns crumbled, discords confederated, .kings 
become vagabonds, and vagabonds made kings at the capricious 
frenzy of a village adventurer ? Have Ave not seen the whole politi- 
cal and moral world shaking as with an earthquake, and shapes the 
most fantastic and formidable and frightful, heaved into life by the 
quiverings of the convulsion ? The storm has passed over us ; Eng- 
land has survived it; if she is wise, her present prosperity will be 
but the handmaid to her justice; if she is pious, the peril she has 
escaped will be but the herald of her expiation. Thus much have I 
said in the way of ai-gument to the enemies of your question. Let 
me offer an humble opinion to its friends. The first and almost the 
solo request which an advocate would make to you is, to remain 
united ; rely on it, a divided assault can never overcome a consol- 
idated resistance. I allow that an educated aristocracy, are as a 
head to the people, without which they cannot tliink : but then the 
people are as hands to the aristocracy, without which it cannot act. 
Concede, then, a little to even each other's prejudices ; recollect that 
individual sacrifice is universal strength; and can there be a nobler 
altar than the altar of your country ? This same spirit of concilia- 
tion should be extended even to your enemies. If England will not 
consider that a brow of suspicion is but a bad accompaniment to an 
act of grace ; if she will not allow that kindness may make those 
friends whom even oppression could not make foes ; if she will not 
confess that the best security she can have from Ireland is by giving 
Ireland an interest in her constitution ; still, since her power is the 



718 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

shield of hev prejudices, you should concede where you cannot con- 
quer ; it is wisdom to yield, when it has become hopeless to combat. 
There is but one concession which I would never advise, and 
which, were I a Catholic, I would never make. You will perceive 
that I allude to any interference with your clergy. That was the 
crime of Mr. Grattau's security bill. It made the patronage of your 
religion the ransom for your liberties, and bought the favor of the 
crown by the surrender of the church. It is a vicious pi'inciple ; it 
is the cause of all your sorrows. If there had not been a state- 
establishment, there would not have been a Catholic bondage. By 
that incestuous conspiracy between the altar and the throne, infidel- 
ity has achieved a more extended dominion than by all the sophisms 
of her philosophy, or all the teiTors of her persecution. It makes 
God's apostle a court appendage, and God himself a court-purveyor ; 
it carves the cross into a cbair of state, where with grace on his 
brow, and gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this 
world's vanity makes Omnipotence a menial to its power, and 
Eternity a pander to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have 
spurned the temporal interference of the Pope, resist the si)iritual 
jurisdiction of the crown. As I do not think that J'ou, on the one 
hand, could surrender the patronage of your religion to the King 
without the most unconscientious compromise, so, on the other hand, 
I do not think the King could ever conscientiously receive it. 
Suppose he receives it ; if he exercises it for the advantage of your 
church, he directly violates the coronation oath, which binds him to 
the exclusive interest of the Church of England ; and if he does not 
intend to exercise it for your advantage, to what purpose does he re- 
quire from you its surrender? But what pretence has England for 
this intei'ferenco with your religion ? It was the religion of her most 
glorious era ; it was the religion of her most ennobled patriots ; it 
was the religion of the wisdom that fi'amed her constitution ; it was 
the religion of the valor that achieved it ; it would have been to this 
day the religion of her empire, had it not been for the lawless lust 
of a murderous adulterer. What right has she to suspect 3'our 
church ? When her thousand sects were brandishing the fragments 
of their faith against each other, and Christ saw his garment without 
a seam, a piece of patch-work for every mountebank who figured in 
the pantomime ; when her Babel temple rocked at every breath of 



CHARLES PHILLIPS. 719 

her Priestleys aud her Paines, Ireland, proof against the menace of 
her power, was proof also against the perilous impiety of her ex- 
ample. But if as Catholics you should guard it, the palladium of 
your creed, not less as Irishmen should you jDrizc it, the relic of your 
country. Deluge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The 
monuments of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader, fell 
beneath the still more savage civilization of another. Alone, amid 
the solitude, your temple stood like some majestic monument amid 
the desert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associa- 
tions, rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its 
martyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable 
hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it 
was surrounded. Oh ! do not for any temporal boon betray the 
great principles Avhich are to purchase you an eternity ! Here, from 
your very sanctuary, — here, with my hand on the endangered altars 
of your faith, in the name of that God, for the freedom of whose 
worship we are so nobJy struggling — I conjure }'ou, let no unholy 
hand firofane the sacred ark of your religion ; presei"ve it inviolate ; 
its light is " light from heaven ; " follow it through all the perils of 
your journey ; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive Israel, it will 
cheer the desert of your bondage, and guide to the land of your 
liberation I 




SPEECHES, 



/ 

Right Hon. Edmund Burke. 



[721] 




... >>e - 



HON. EDMUND BURKE. 



Speech on American Taxation. 



On the 19th April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Eye, proposed in the House- 
of Commons that the House should proceed to take into consideration the duty of 
3d. per lb., imposed under the Act of 17U7, on tea imported into America. It ^vas 
on this occasion that Burke, then member for the borough of Wendover, dolivered 
the following spcocli — an oration wliicli contains some of the most splendid pas- 
sages in the English language. It was marked witli such enci'gy, tliat it roused the 
attention of the House, thougli spoken at a very late period in the debate. It is 
said tliat Lord John Towusheud, struck by tlie remarkable beauty of one passage, 
cried aloud, "What a man is this ! how couldhe acquire sucli transcendent powers .'" 
The speech was published under the orator's supervision, in compliance witli the 
public wish. Few literary efforts have given evidence of the possession of so much 
power of sarcasm, as the description of the coalition ministry of Lord Grafton. 
The character of Lord Chatham is most exquisitely portrayed. For elegance of 
diction, and beauty of illustration, it has, perhaps, never been surpassed. 

^P?IR, — I agree with the honorable gentleman who spoke last, that 
^^ this subject is not new in this house. Very disagreeably to 

fthis house, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace 
and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more 
familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we have 
been lashed round and round this miserable circle of occasional 
arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure our heads must 
turn, and our stomachs nauseate with them. Wc have had them in 
every shape ; we have looked at them in every point of view. In- 
vention is exhausted ; reason is fiitigued ; experience has given 
judgment ; but obstinacy is not yet conquered. 

The honorable gentleman has made one endeavor more to diver- 
sify the form of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a 
speech composed almost entirely of challenges. Challenges are 
serious things ; and as he is a man of prudence as well as resolution, 
I dare say he has very well weighed those challenges befm'e he de- 
livered them. I had long the happiness to sit at the same side of 

(723) 



721 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the house, and to agree with the honorable gentleman on all the 
American questions. My sentiments, I am sure, ai"e well known to 
him ; and I thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though 
I find myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of 
an old friendship, he will permit me to apply myself to the house 
under the sanction of his authority; and, on the various grounds he 
has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions which I have 
formed, upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fullest 
consideration I could bestow upon it. 

He has stated to the house two grounds of deliberation ; one nar- 
row and simple, and merely confined to the question on your paper : 
the other more large and more complicated ; comprehending the whole 
series of the parliamentar}'^ proceedings with regard to America, their 
causes, and their consequences. With regard to the latter ground, 
he states it as useless, and thinks it maybe even dangerous, to enter 
into so extensive a field of inquiry. Yet, to m}' surprise, he had 
hardly laid down this restrictive proposition, to which his authority 
would have given so much weight, when directly, and with the same 
authorit}', ho condemns it, and declares it absolutely necessary to 
enter into the most ample historical detail. His zeal has thrown him 
a little out of his usual accuracy. In this perplexity what shall we 
do. Sir, who are willing to submit to the law he gives us? He has 
reproljated in one part of his speech the rule he had laid down for 
debate in the other ; and, after narrowing the ground for all those 
who are to speak after him, he takes an excursion himself, as un- 
bounded as the subject and the extent of his great abilities. 

Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I 
will endeavor to obey such of them as have the sanction of his ex- 
ample, and to stick to that rule, which, though not inconsistent with 
the other, is tlie most rational. He was certainly in the right when he 
took the matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with 
him in his censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave 
to say, either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is 
not wise ; and tlie proper, tlie only proper, subject of inquiry is, " not 
how we got into this difBculty, but how we are to get out of it." In 
other words, we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and 
to reject our experience. The mode of delil)eration he recommends 
is diametrically opposite to every rule of reason, and every principle of 



EDMUND BURKE. 725- 

good sense established amongst mankind. For that sense, and that 
reason, I have always understood, absolutely to prescribe, whenever 
we are involved in difficulties from the measures we have pursued, 
that we should take a strict review of those measures, in order to cor- 
rect our errors if they should be corrigible ; or at least to avoid a 
dull uniformity in mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being re- 
peatedly caught in the same snare. 

Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical 
discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further 
than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that 
large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the 
house satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone 
the honorable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly 
confined us. 

He desires to know whether, if we were to repeal this tax agree- 
ably to the proposition of the honorable gentleman who made the 
motion, the Americans would not take post on this concession, in 
order to make a new attack on the next body of taxes ; and whether 
they would not call for a repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as 
they do now for the repeal of the duty on tea ? Sir, I can give no 
security on this subject. But I will do all that I can, and all that can 
be fairly demanded. To the experience which the honorable gentle- 
man reprobates in one instant, and reverts to in the next ; to that ex- 
perience, without the least wavering or hesitation on my part, I 
steadily appeal ; and would to God there was no other arbiter to de- 
cide ou the vote with which the house is to conclude this day ! 

When parliament repealed the stamp act in the year 1766, 1 affirm 
first, that the Americans did not in consequence of this measure call 
upon you to give up the former parliamentary revenue which subsisted 
in that country ; or even any one of the articles which compose it. 
I affirm also, that when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, 
you revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of 
the colonists with new jealousy, and all sorts of apprehensions, then 
it was that they quarrelled with the old taxes, as well as the new : 
then it was, and not till then, that they questioned all the parts of 
your legislative power ; and by the battery of such questions have 
shaken the solid structure of this empire to its deepest foundations. 

Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such 



726 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

convincing, such damning proof, tliat however the contrary may be 
whispered in circles, or bawled in newspapers, they never more will 
dare to raise their voices in this house. I speak with great confidence. 
I have reason for it. The ministers arc with me. They at least are 
convinced that the repeal of the stamp act had not, and that no repeal 
can have, Ihu conscqucn;es which the honorable gentleman who de- 
fends their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer 
him for a conclusive answer to this objection. I carry my proof irre- 
sistibly into the very body of both ministry and parliament ; not on 
any general reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the 
conduct of the honorable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new 
revenue itself. 

The act of 17G7, which grants this tea duty, sets forth in its pre- 
amble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America, for the 
supf)ort of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still 
more extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of 
duties. About two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean 
the present ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, 
and to leave (for reasons best know to themselves) only the sixth 
standing. Suppose any person, at the time of that i-epeal, had thus 
addressed the minister, " Condemning, as j'ou do, the repeal of the 
stamp act, why do you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, 
and painters' colors? Let your pretence for the repeal bo what it 
will, are you not thoroughly convinced, that j^our concessions will 
produce, not satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans; and that 
the giving up these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" 
This objection was as palpable then as it is now ; and it was as good 
for preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. Besides, the 
minister will recollect, that the rcjieal of the stamp act had but just 
preceded his repeal ; and the ill policy of that measure (had it been 
so impolitic as it has been represented) , and the mischiefs it produced, 
were quite recent. Upon tlic principles, theieforc, of the honorable 
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister 
has nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by himself, and 
by all his associates, old and new, as a destro3'er, in the first trust 
of finance, of the revenues ; and, in the first rank of honor, as a be- 
trayer of the dignity of his country. 

Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well- 



EDMUND BURKE. 727 

■wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those 
he calls his friends, and even out of his own. I will do him the jus- 
tice he is denied at home. He has not been this wicked or impru- 
dent man. He knew that a repeal had no tendency to produce the 
mischiefs which gave so much alarm to his honorable friend. His 
work was not bad in its principle, but imperfect in its execution ; 
and the motion on your paper presses him only to complete a proper 
plan, which, by some unfortunate and unaccountable error, he had 
left unfinished. 

I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last, is thoroughly 
satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their 
own favorite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless. If he 
is not, I leave him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle the 
matter as Avell as they can together ; for, if the repeal of American 
taxes destroys all our government in America, he is the man ! and 
he is the worst of all the repealers, because he is the last. 

But I hear it rung coutiuually in ray ears, now and formerly, "the 
preamble ! what will become of the preamble, if you repeal this tax?" 
I am sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and dis- 
graces of parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it now 
Stands, has the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the 
act ; if that can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I 
should be afraid to express myself in this manner, especially in the 
face of such a formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before 
me, composed of the ancient household troops of that side of the 
house, and the new recruits from this, if the matter were not clear 
and indisputable. Nothing but truth could give me this firmness ; 
but plain truth and clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. 
The clerk will be so good as to turn to the act, and read this favor- 
ite preamble : — 

" Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty'8 
dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defray- 
ing the charge of administration of justice, and support of civil government, in such 
provinces where it shall be found necessary, and towards further defraying the 
expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions." 

You have heard this pompous performance. Now where is the 
revenue which is to do all these mighty things? Five-sixths 
repealed, abandoned, sunk, gone, lost forever. Does the poor, 



728 TREASUKT OF ELOQUENCE. 

solitary tea duty support the purposes of this preamble? Is not 
the supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea duty 
had perished in the general wreck? Here, Mr. SjDeaker, is a pre- 
cious mockery ; a preamble without an act ; taxes granted in order 
to be repealed, and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up ! 
This is raising a revenue in America ! this is jireserving dignity in 
England ! If you repeal this tax in compliance with the motion, I 
readily admit that you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss 
in it. The object of the act is gone already ; and all you suffer is 
the purging the statute-book of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, 
and false recital. 

It has been said, again and again, that the five taxes were repealed 
on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand ; a 
paper which I constantly carry about ; which I have often used, and 
shall often use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of com- 
mercial principles I know not ; for, if your government in America 
is destroyed by the repeal of taxes, it is of no consequence upon 
what ideas the repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax too upon com- 
mercial principles if you please. These principles will serve as well 
now as they did formerly. But you know that, either your objec- 
tion to a repeal from these supposed consequences has no validity, 
or that this pretence never could remove it. This commercial motive 
never was believed by any man, either in America, which tliis letter 
is meant to soothe, or in England, which it is meant to deceive. It 
was impossible it should. Because every man, in the least acquainted 
with the detail of commei-ce, must know, that several of the articles 
on w^iich the tax was repealed were fitter objects of duties than 
almost any other articles that could possibly be chosen; without 
comparison more so, than the tea that was left taxed : as infinitely 
loss liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red and white 
lead was of this nature. You have, in this kingdom, an advantage 
in lead, that amounts to a monopoly. When you find yourself in 
this situation of advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even 3^our 
own export. You did so, soon after the last war; when, upon this 
principle, you ventured to impose a duty on coals. In all the articles 
of American contraband trade, whoever heard of the smuggling of 
red lead and white lead ? You might, therefore well enough, without 
danger of contraband, and without injury to commerce (if this were 



EDMUND BURKE. 729 

the whole consideration) have taxed these commodities. The same 
may be said of glass. Besides, some of the things taxed were so 
trivial, that the loss of the objects themselves, and their utter anni- 
hilation out of American commerce, would have been comparatively 
as nothing. But is the article of tea such an object in the trade of 
England, as not to be felt, or felt but slightly, like white lead, and 
red lead, and painters' colors? Tea is an object of far other im- 
portance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, taking it with 
its necessary connections, of any in the mighty circle of our com- 
merce. If commercial principles had been the true motives to the 
repeal, or had they been at all attended to, tea would have been the 
last article we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy. 

Sir, it is not a pleasant consider.'ition ; but nothing in the world 
can read so awful and so instructive a lesson, as the conduct of min- 
istry in this business, upon the mischief of not having large and lib- 
eral ideas in the management of great affairs. Never have the 
servants of the state looked at the whole of your complicated inter- 
ests in one connected view. Thoy have taken things, by bits and 
scraps, some at one time and one pretence, and some at another, just 
as they pressed, without any sort of regard to their i-elations or 
dependencies. They never had anj^ kind of system, right or wrong, 
but only invented occasionally some miserable tale for the day, in 
order meanly to sneak out of difSculties, into which they had proudly 
strutted. And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of 
meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal 
of an act, which they had not the generous courage, when they found 
and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such man- 
agement, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils, so paltry a 
sum as threepence in the eyes of a financier, or so insignificant an 
article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of 
a commercial empire that circled the whole globe. 

Do you forget that in the very last year, you stood on the pi'cci- 
pice of general bankrupt cj-? Your danger was indeed great. Yoii 
were distressed in the affairs of the East India Compan}^ ; and you 
well know what sort of things are involved in the comijrehensive 
energy of that significant appellation. I am not called upon to 
enlarge to you on that danger, which you thought proper yourselves 
to aggravate, and to display to the world with all the parade of 



730 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

incliscvect declamation. The monopoly of the most lucrative trades, 
and the possession of imperial revenues, had brought you to the verge 
of beggary and ruin. Such was your rei)resentation — such, in some 
measure, was your case. The vent often millions of pounds of this 
commodity, now locked up by the operation of an injudicious tax, 
and rotting in the warehouses of the company, would have prevented 
all this distress, and all that series of desperate measures which you 
thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of it. America 
would have furnished that vent, which no other part of the world can 
furnish but America ; where tea is next to a necessary of life ; and 
■where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought 
East India committees have done us at least so much good, as to let 
us know, that without a more extensive sale of that article our East 
India revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with 
this country. It is through the American trade of tea that j-our 
East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with 
their burthen. They are ponderous indeed, and they must have that 
great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is 
the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit of the west and of 
the east. This folly has thrown open folding-doors to contraband, 
and will be the means of giving the profits of the trade of your colo- 
nies to every nation but yourselves. Never did a people suffer so 
much for the empty words of a preamble. It must be given up. 
For on what principle does it stand ? This famous revenue stands at 
this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet 
known in all the comprehensive (but too comprehensive !) vocabulary 
of finance — a preambulary tax. It is indeed a tax of sophistry, a 
tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a 
tax for anything but benefit to the imposers, or satisfaction to the 
subject. 

Well ! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to 
take the teas. You will force them? Has seven years' struggle been 
yet able to force them? O, but it seems " we are in the right; the 
tax is trifling — in eflect it is rather an exoneration than an imposi- 
tion ; three-fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to 
America is taken off; the place of collection is only siiifted ; instead 
of the retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is threepence 
custom in America." All this, sir, is very true. But this is the 



EDMUND BUEKB. 7;>1 

very folly aud mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you 
know that you have deliberately thrown away a large duty which 
you held secure and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting 
one three-fourths less, through every hazard, through certain litiga- 
tion, and possibly through war. 

The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and glass im- 
posed by the same act, was exactly in the same spirit. There are 
heavy excises on those articles when used in England. On export 
these excises are drawn back. But instead of withholding the draw- 
back, which might have been done with ease, without charge, with- 
out possibility of smuggling ; and instead of applying the money 
(money already in j'our hands) according to your pleasure, you 
began your operations in finance by flinging away your revenue ; 
you allowed the whole drawback on export, and then you charged 
the duty (which j'ou had before discharged), payable in the colonics ; 
where it was certain the collection would devour it to the bone ; if 
any revenue were ever sufiered to be collected at all. One spirit 
pervades and animates the whole mass. 

Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than 
to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your 
most certain revenues and your clearest interest, merely for the sake 
of insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commod- 
ity of tea could bear an imposition of threepence. But no commodity 
will bear threejoence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings 
of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to 
pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of 
Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden 
when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would 
twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No ! but the 
payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle on which it was 
demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that 
preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the M'eight of the duty, 
that the Americans arc unable and unwilling to bear. 

It is then, sir, upon the principle of this measure, and nothing 
else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political expediency. 
Your act of 1767 assei'ts, that it is expedient to raise a revenue in 
America ; your act of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contra- 
dicts the act of 1767 ; and, by something much stronger than words, 



732 TREASURiT OF ELOQUENCE. 

asserts that it is not expedient. It is a reflection upon your wisdom 
to pei'sist in a solemn parliamentary declaration of the expediency 
of any object, for which, at the same time, you make no sort of pro- 
vision. And pi'ay, sir, let not this circumstance escape you ; it is 
very material ; that the preamble of this act, which we wish to 
repeal, is not declaratory of a right, as some gentlemen seem to 
argue it ; it is only a recital of the expediency of a certain exercise 
of a right supposed already to have been asserted ; an exercise you are 
now.contending for by ways and means which you confess, though they 
were obeyed, to be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are 
therefore at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a 
phantom ; a quiddity ; a thing that wants, not only a substance, but 
even a name ; for a thing, which is neither abstract right nor i)rolit- 
able enjoyment. 

They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not 
how it happens-, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incumbrance 
to you ; for it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your 
equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend 
for to be reason ; show it to be common sense ; show it to be the 
means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow 
it what dignity you please. But what dignity is derived from the 
perseverance in absurdity is more than ever I could discern. The 
honorable gentleman has said well — indeed, in most of his general 
observations I agree with him — he says, that this subject does not 
stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not ! every hour you con- 
tinue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on .you, and 
therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as 
you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them 
grow upon you every hour of your delay. 

But will you repeal the Act, says the honorable gentleman, at this 
instant when America is in open resistance to your authority, and 
that you have just revived your system of taxation? He thinks he 
has driven us into a corner. But thus pent up, I am content to 
meet him ; because I enter the lists supported by my old authority, 
his new friends, the ministers themselves. The honorable gentle- 
man remembers, that about five j'ears ago as great disturbances as 
the present pi-evailed in America on account of the new taxes. The 
ministers represented these disturbances as treasonable ; and this 



EDMUND BURKE. 733 

house thought proper, ou that representation, to make a fomous 
address for a revival, and for a new application of a statute of Henry 
VIII. We besought the king, in that well-considered address, to 
inquire into treasons, and to bring the supposed traitors from Amer- 
ica to Great Britain for trial. His majesty was pleased graciously 
to promise a compliance with our request. All the attempts from 
this side of the house to resist these violences, and to bring about 
a repeal, were treated with the utmost scorn. An appi-ehension of 
the very consequences now stated by the honorable gentleman was 
then given as a reason for shutting the door against all hoi)e of such 
an alteration. And so strong was the spirit for supporting the new 
taxes, that the session concluded with the following remarkable 
•declaration. After stating the vigorous measures which had Iieen 
pursued, the speech from the throne proceeds : — 

" You have assured me of your firm support in the prosecution of 
them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more likely to enable the 
■well disposed among my subjects in that part of the world, effectu- 
ally to discourage and defeat the designs of the factious and seditious, 
than the hearty concurrence of every branch of the legislature, in 
maintaining the execution of the laws in every part of my domin- 
ions." 

After this no man dreamed that a repeal under this ministiy could 
possiblj' take place. The honorable gentleman knows as well as I, 
that the idea was utterly exploded by those who sway the house. 
This sijeech was made on the ninth day of May, 1769. Five days 
after this speech, that is, on the 13th of the same month, the public 
circular letter, a part of which I am going to read to you, was writ- 
ten by Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies. After 
reciting the substance of the king's speech, he goes on thus : — 

"I can take upon me to assure you, notwithstanding insinuations 
to the contrary, from men with factious and seditious views, that hia 
majesty's present administration have at no time entertained a design 
to propose to parliament to lay any further taxes upon America, for 
the purpose of raising a revenue ; and that it is at present their in- 
tention to propose, the next session of parliament, to take olf the 
•duties upon glass, paper, and colors, upon consideration of such 
duties having been laid on contrary to the true principles of com- 
merce. 



734 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

" These have always been, and still are, the sentiments of his 
majesty's present servants ; and by which their conduct in respect 
to America has been governed. And his majesty relies upon your 
prudence and fidelity for such an explanation of his meiisures as may 
tend to remove the prejudices which have been excited by the mis- 
representations of those who are enemies to the peace and prosperity 
of Great Britain and her colonies, and to re-establish that mutual 
confidence and affection upon which the glory and safety of the Brit- 
ish empire depend." 

Here, sir, is a canonical book of ministerial scripture, the general 
epistle to the Americans. AVhat does the gentleman say to it? 
Here a repeal is promised, promised without condition, and while 
your authority was actually resisted. I pass by the public promise 
of a peer relative to the repeal of taxes by this house. I pass by 
the use of tlie king's name in a matter of supply, that sacred and 
reserved right of the Commons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of 
parliament hurling its thunders at the gigantic rebellion of America, 
and tlien five days after, prostrate at the feet of those assemblies we 
afi"ected to despise, begging them, by the intervention of our minis- 
terial sui-etics, to receive our submission, and heartily promising 
amendment. These might have been serious matters formerly, but 
wo are grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, therefore, from the 
constitutional consideration to the mere policy, does not this letter 
imply, that the idea of taxing America for the purpose of revenue is- 
an abominable project ; M'hen the ministry suppose none but factious 
men, and with seditious views, could charge them witli it? does not 
this letter adopt and sanctify the American distinction of taxing for 
a revenue? does it not formally reject all future taxation on that 
principle? does it not state the ministerial rejection of such principle 
of taxation, not as the occasional, but the constant opinion of the 
kinfr's servants? does it not say (I care not how consistently), but 
does it not say, that their conduct with regard to America las been 
always governed by this policy? It goes a great deal further. 
These excellent and trusty servants of the king, justly fearful lest 
they themselves should have lost all credit with the world, bring out 
the image of their gracious sovereign from the inmost and most 
sacred shrine, and they pawn him as a security for their promises. 
" His majesty relies on your prudence and fidelity for such an expla.- 



EDMUND BURKE. 735 

nation of his measures." These sentiments of the minister, and 
these measures of his majesty, can only relate to the principle and 
pi'actice of taxing for a revenue ; and accordingly Lord Botecourt, 
stating it as such, did, with great propriety, and in the exact spirit 
of his instructions, endeavor to remove the fears of the Virginian 
assembly, lest the sentiments which it seems (unknown to the world) 
had always been those of the ministers, and by which their conduct 
in respect to America had been governed, should by some possible 
revolution, favorable to wicked American taxers, be hereafter coun- 
teracted. He addresses them in this manner : — 

" Jt may possiblj' be objected, that, as his majesty's present admin- 
istration are not immortal, their successors may be inclined to attempt 
to undo what the present ministers shall have attempted to perform ; 
and to that objection I can give but this answer : that it is my firm 
opinion that the plan I have stated to you will certainly take place, 
and that it will never be departed from ; and so determined am I for- 
ever to abide by it, that I ■will be content to be declai'ed infamous, 
if I do not, to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, and 
upon all occasions, exert every power with which I either am, or 
ever shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the 
continent of America that satisfaction which I have been authorized 
to promise this day by the confidential servants of our gracious sov- 
ereign, who to my certain knowledge rates his honor so high, that 
he would rather part with his crown than preserve it by deceit." 

A glurious and true character! which (since we suffer his minis- 
ters with impunity to answer for his ideas of taxation) we ought to 
make it our business to enable his majesty to preserve in all its 
lustre. Let him have character, since ours is no more I Let some 
l^art of government be kept in respect ! 

This e}Mstle was not the letter of Lord Hillsborough solely, though 
he held the ofiicial pen. It was the letter of the noble lord upon the 
floor, and of all the king's (hcu ministers, who (with I think the ex- 
ception of two only) are his ministers at this hour. The very first 
news that a British parliament heard of what it was to do with the 
duties which it had given and granted to the king, was by the pub- 
lication of the votes of American assemblies. It was in America 
that your resolutions were pre-declared. It was from thence that 
we knew to a certainty how much exactly, and not a scruple more 



736 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

nor less, we wei-e to repeal. We were unworthy to be let into the 
secret of our own conduct. The assemblies had confidential commu- 
nications from his majest^'^'s confidential servants. We were nothing 
but instruments. Do you, after this, wonder that you have no weight 
and no respect in the colonies? After this, are you surprised that 
parliament is every day and everywhere losing (I feel it with sorrow, 
I utter it with reluctance) that reverential affection which so endear- 
ing a name of authority ought ever to carry with it ; that you are 
obeyed solely from respect to the bayonet ; and that this house, the 
ground and pillar of freedom, is itself held up only by the treacher- 
ous underpinning and clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power ? 

If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just policy and 
common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for preserving 
it, and for reconciling it with any concession. If in the session of 
1768, that session of idle terror and empty menaces, you had, as 
j^ou were often pressed to do, repealed these taxes, then your strong 
operations would have come justified and enforced, in case 3'our con- 
cessions had been returned by outrages. But, preposterously, you 
began with violence ; and before terrors could have any effect, either 
good or bad, your ministers immediutel_y begged pardon, and pro- 
mised that repeal to the obstinate Americans which they had refused 
in an easy, good-natured, complying British parliament. The as- 
semblies which had been publiclj^ and avowedly dissolved for their 
contumacy, are called together to receive j'our submission. Your 
ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants here, and then 
went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting, and whining, and 
complaining of faction, which represented them as friends to a rev- 
enue from the colonies. I hope nobody in this house will hereafter 
have the impudence to defend American taxes in the name of minis- 
try. The moment they do, with this letter of attorney in my hand, 
I will tell them in the authorized terms, they are wretches, with 
factious and seditious views ; enemies to the peace and prosperity 
of the mother country and the colonies, and subverters of the nuitual 
affection and confidence on which the glory and safety of the British 
empire depend. 

After this letter, the question is no more on propriety or dignity. 
They are gone already, the faith of 3-our sovereign is pledged for 
the political principle ; the general dec^laration in the letter goes to 



EDMUND BURKE. 737 

the whole of it. You must tlierefore either abandon the scheme of 
taxing, or you must send the ministers tarred and feathered to 
America, who dared to hold out the royal faith for a renunciation 
of all taxes for revenue. Them you must punish, or this faith you 
must preserve ; the preservation of this faith is of more consequence 
than the duties on red lead or white lead, or on broken glass, or atlas- 
ordinary, or demy-fine, or blue-royal, or bastard, or fool's-cap, which 
you have given up ; or the threepence on tea which you retained. 
The letter went stamped with the public authority of this kingdom. 
The instructions for the colony government go under no other sanc- 
tion, and America cannot believe, and will not obey you, if 3'ou do 
not preserve this channel of communication sacred. You are now 
punishing the colonies for acting on distinctions, held out by that 
ver}^ ministry which is here shining in riches, in favor, and in power ; 
and urging the punishment of the very offence to which they had 
themselves been the tempters. 

Sir, if reasons respecting simpl}^ your commerce, which is your 
own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the live 
duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of 
the king and ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for rev- 
enue, mention it as the means of re-establishing the confidence and 
affection of the colonies? Is it a way of sootiiing others, to assiu'e 
them that j'ou will take good care of yourself? The medium, the 
only medium for regaining their affection and confidence is, that you 
will take off something oppressive to their minds ; sir, the letter 
strongly enforces that idea, for though the repeal of the taxes is 
promised on commercial principles, yet the means of counteracting 
the insinuations of men with factious and seditious views, is by a 
disclaimer of the intention of taxing for revenue, as a constant inva- 
riable sentiment and rule of conduct in the government of America. 

I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in a former del)ate 
to be sure (it would be disorderly to refer to it, I suppose I read it 
somewhere), but the noble lord was pleased to s;iy, that he did not 
conceive how it could enter into the head of man to impose such 
taxes as those of 17G7 ; I mean those taxes which he voted for im- 
posing and voted for repealing ; as being taxes contrary to all the 
principles of commerce laid on British manufactures. 

I dare say the noble lord is perfectly well read, because the duty 



738 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of his particular office requires he should be so, in all our revenue 
laws ; and in the policy which is to be collected out of them. Now, 
sir, %\hen ho had read this act of American revenue, and a little re- 
covered from his astonishment, I suppose he made one step retro- 
grade (it is but one), and looked at the act which stands just before 
in the statute book. The American revenue act is the forty-fifth 
chapter, the other to which I refer is the forty-fourth of the same 
session. These two acts are Ijoth to the same purpose, both revenue 
acts, both taxing out of tlic kingdom, and both taxing British manu- 
factures exported. As the forty-fifth is an act for raising a revenue 
in America, the forty-fourth is an act for raising a revenue in the 
Isle of Man ; the two acts perfectly agree in all respects except one. 
In the act for taxing tiie Isle of Man, the nolile lord will find, not, 
as in the American act, four or five articles, but almost the wliole 
body of British manufactures taxed from two and a half to fifteen 
per cent., and some articles, such as that of spirits, a great deal 
higher. You did not think it uncommercial to tax the whole mass* 
of 3'uur manufactures, and let me add, your agriculture too; for I 
now recollect, British corn is there also taxed up to ten per cent , 
and this too in the very headquarters, the very citadel of smuggling, 
the Isle of Man. Now, will the noble lord condescend to tell nie 
why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures sent out to America, 
and not the taxes on the manuflictures exported to the Isle of INIan? 
The principle was exactly the same, the objects charged infinitely 
more extensive, the duties without comparistm higher. Why? why 
notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because the taxes were 
quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man, and because they raised a 
flame in America. Your reasons were political, not commercial. 
The repeal was made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses 
it, to regain the confidence and afl'ection of the colonies, on which 
the glory and safety of the British empire depend. A wise and just 
motive surely, if ever there was such. But the mischief and dishonor 
is, that you have not done what you have given the colonies just 
cause to expect, when your ministers disclaimed the idea of taxes 
for a revenue. There is nothing simple, nothing manly, nothing in- 
genuous, open, decisive, or steady, in the proceeding, with regard 
either to the continuance or the repeal of the taxes. The whole has 
an air of littleness and fraud. The article of tea is slurred over in 



EDMUND BURKE. 739 

the circular letter, as it were by accident — nothing is said of a res- 
olution either to keep that tax, or to give it up. There is no fair 
dealing in any part of the transaction. 

If you mean to follow your true motive and your public faith, give 
up your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the principle of which has 
in effect, been disclaimed in 3'our name ; and which produces you no 
advantage, no, not a penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor 
pretence instead of a solid reason, and will still adhere to your cant 
of commerce, j'ou have ten thousand times more strong commercial 
reasons for giving up this duty on tea, than for abandoning the five 
others that you have already renounced. 

Iho American consumption of tea is annually, I believe, worth 
£300,000, at the least farthing. If you urge the American violence 
as a justification of your perseverance in enforcing this tax, you know 
th;it j'ou can never answer this plain question — why did you repeal 
the others given in the same act, whilst the very same violence sub- 
sisted ? — but you did not find the violence cease upon that conces- 
sion. No ! because the concession was far short of satisfying the 
principle v.'hich Lord Hillsborough had abjured ; or even the pretence 
on which tlie repeal of the other taxes was announced, and because, 
bj^ enabling the East India Company to open a shop for defeating 
the American resolution not to pay that specific tax, you manifestly 
shewed a hankering after the principle of the act whicli you formerly 
had renounced. Whatever road you take leads to a compliance with 
this motion. It opens to 3^ou at the end of every vista. Your com- 
merce, your policy, your promises, your reasons, your pretences, 
your consistency, your inconsistency — all jointly oblige you to this 
repeal. 

But still it sticks in our throats, if we go so far, the Americans 
will go farther. We do not know that. We ought from experience 
rather to presume the contr.ary. Do we not know for certain, that 
the Americans are going on as fast as possible, whilst we refuse to 
gratify them? can they do more, or can they do worse, if we 3'ield 
this point? I think this concession will rather fix a turnpike to pre- 
vent tlieir further progress. It is impossible to answer for bodies of 
men. But I am sure the natural effect of fidelity, clemency, kind- 
ness in governors, is peace, good will, order, and esteem, on the 
part of the governed. I would, certainly, at least, give these fair 



740 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

pi'inciples a fair trial ; which, since the making of this act to this 
hour, they never have had. 

Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought nec- 
essary upon the narrow part of the subject, I have given him, I hope, 
a satisfactory answer. He next presses me by a variety of direct 
challenges and oblique reflections to say something on the historical 
part. I shall therefore, sir, open myself fully on that important and 
delicate subject; not for the sake of telling yon a long story (which 
I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of), but for the 
sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily 
result from it. It shall not bo longer, if I can help it, than so seri- 
ous a matter requires. 

Permit mo then, sir, to lead your attention very f;ir back ; back 
to the act of navigation ; the corner-stone of the policy of this conn- 
try with regard to its colonies. Sir, that policy was from the begin- 
ning purely commercial, and the commercial system was wholly 
restrictive. It was the system of a monopoly. No trade was let 
loose from that constraint, but merely to enable the colonists to dis- 
pose of what, in the course of your trade, you could not take ; or to 
enable them to dispose of such articles as we forced upon tiiem, and 
for which, without some degree of liberty, they could not pay. 
Hence all your specific and detailed eniunerations : hence the innu- 
merable checks and counterchecks : hence that infinite variety of 
paper chains by which you bind together this complicated system of 
the colonies. This principle of commercial monopoly runs through 
no less than twenty-nine acts of parliament, from the year 1660 to 
the unfortimate period of 1764. 

In all those acts the system of commerce is established, as that 
from whence alone you proposed to make the colonies contribute (I 
mean directly, and by the operation of your superintending legisla- 
tive power) to the strength of the empire. I venture to say, that 
during that whole period, a parliamentary revenue from thence was 
never once in contemplation. Accordingly, in all the number of 
laws passed with regard to the plantations, the words which distin- 
guish revenue laws, specifically as such, were, I think, premcditittcly 
avoided. I do not say, sir, that a form of words alters the nature 
of the law, or abridges the power of the lawgiver. It certainly 
docs not. However, titles and formal preaml)les are not always idle 



EDMUND BUEItE. 742 

words ; and the lawyers frequently argue from them. I state these 
facts to shew, not what was yoiu- right, but what has been your set- 
tled policy. Our revenue laws have usually a tille, purporting their 
being grants ; and the words " give and grant " usually precede the 
enacting parts. Although duties were imposed on America in acts 
of King Charles the Second, and in acts of King William, no one 
title of giving " an aid to his majesty," or any other of the usual 
titles to revenue acts, was to be found in any of them till 17G4 ; nor 
were the Avords "give and grant" in any preamble until the 6th of 
George the Second. However, the title of this act of George the 
Second, notw-ithslanding the words of donation, considers it merely 
as a regulation of trade, "an act for the better securing of the trade 
of his majesty's sugar colonies in America." This act was made on 
a compromise of all, and at the express desire of a part, of the colo- 
nies themselves. It was thei'efore in some measure with their con- 
sent ; and having a title directly purporting only a commercial 
regulation, and being in truth nothing more, the words were passed 
by, at a time when no jealousy was entertained, and things were little 
scrutinized. Even Governor Bernard, in his second printed letter, 
dated in 1763, gives it as his opinion, that " it was an act of prohi- 
bition, not of revenue." This is certainly true, that no act avowedly 
for the purpose of revenue, and with the ordinary title and recital 
taken together, is found in the statute book until the year I have 
mentioned ; that is, the year 1764. All before this period stood on 
commercial regulation and restraint. The scheme of a colony reve- 
nue by British authority appeared thercfoi-e to the Americans in the 
light of a great innovation ; the words of Governor Bernard's ninth 
letter, written in Nov. 1765, state this idea very strongly; "it 
must," saj-s he, "have been supposed, such an innovation as a parlia- 
mentary taxation, would cause a great alarm, and meet with much 
opposition in most parts of America ; it was quite new to the people, 
and had no visible bounds set to it." After stating the weakness of 
government there, he says, "was this a time to introduce so great a 
novelty as a parliamentary inland taxation in America ? " Whatever 
the right might have been, this mode of using it was absolutely new 
in policy and practice. 

Sir, they who are friends to the schemes of American revenue say, 
that the commercial restraint is full as hard a law for America to 



742 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

live under. I think so too. I think it, if uncompensated, to be a 
condition of as rigorous servitude as men can be subject to. But 
America boro it from the fundamental act of navigation until 17G4. 
Why? Because men do bear the inevitable constitution of their 
original nature with all its infirmities. The act of navigation at- 
tended the colonies from their infoncj>grew with their growth, and 
strengthened with their strength. They Avcro confirmed in obedi- 
ence to it, even more by usage than by law. They scarcely had 
remembered a time when they were not subject to such restraint. 
Besides, they were indemnified for it by a pecuniary compensation. 
Their monopolist happened to be one of the richest men in tlie world. 
By his immense capital (primarily employed, not for their benefit, 
but his own) they were enabled to proceed with their fisheries, their 
agriculture, their ship-building (and their trade too within the 
limits), in such a manner as got far the start of the slow, languid 
operations of unassisted nature. This capital was a hot-bed to them. 
Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For my 
part, I never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce, and their 
cultivated and commodious life, but they seem to me rather ancient 
nations grown to perfection through a long scries of fortunate 
events, and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in 
many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday ; than a set of mis- 
erable outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out, on 
the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness three thousand 
miles from all civilized intercourse. 

All this was done by England, whilst England pursued trade, and 
forgot revenue. You not only acquired commerce, but you actually 
created the very objects of trade in America ; and by that creation 
you raised the trade of this kingdom at least four-fold. America 
had the compensation of your capital, which made her bear her ser- 
vitude. She had another compensation, which you are now going to 
take away from her. She had, except the commercial restraint, 
every characteristic mark of a free people in all her internal concerns. 
She had the image of the British constitution. She had the sub- 
stance. She was taxed by her own representatives. She chose 
most of her own magistrates. She paid them all. She had in effect 
the sole disposal of her own internal government. This whole state 
of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken together, is cer- 



EDMUND BURKE. 743 

tainly not perfect freedom ; but comparing it with the ordinaiy cir- 
cumstances of human nature, it was an happy and a liberal condition. 

I know, sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains have been taken 
to inflame our minds by an outcry, in this house and out of it, that 
in America the act of navigation neither is, or ever was, obeyed. 
But if you take the colonies through, I afBrm, that its authority never 
was disputed ; that it was nowhere disputed for any length of time ; 
and on the whole, that it was well observed. Wherever the act 
pressed hard, many individuals indeed evaded it. This is nothing. 
These scattei'ed individuals never denied the law, and never ol)C3'ed 
it. Just as it happens whenever the laws of trade, whenever the 
laws of revenue, press hard upon the people in England ; in that 
case all 3- our shores arc full of contraband. Your right to give a 
monopoly to the East India Company, your right to lay immense 
duties on French brandy, are not disputed in England. You do 
not make this charge on any man. But you know there is not a 
creek from Pcntland Frith to the Isle of Wight, in which they do 
not smuggle immense quantities of teas. East India goods, and 
brandies. I take it for granted, that the authority of Governor 
Bernard in this point is indisputal)le. Speaking of these laws, as 
they regarded that part of America now in so unhappy a condition, 
he says, "I believe they are nowhere better supported than in this 
province ; I do not pretend that it is entirely free from a breach of 
these laws; but that such a breach, if discovered, is justly pun- 
ished." What more can you say of the obedience to any laws in any 
country? An obedience to these laws formed the acknowledgment, 
instituted by yourselves, for your superiority ; and was the payment 
you originally imposed for your protection. 

Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the colonics on 
the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that of reve- 
nue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation. You cannot have 
both by tlie same authority. To join together the restraints of an 
universal internal and external monopoly, with an universal internal 
and external taxation, is an unnatural union ; perfect uncompensated 
slavery. You have long since decided for yourself and them ; and 
you and they have prospered exceedingly under that decision. 

This nation, sir, never thought of departing from that choice until 
the period immediately on the close of the last war. Then a scheme 



744 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of government new in many things seemed to have been adopted. I 
saw, or thought I saw, several symptoms of a great change, whilst I 
sat in your gallery, a good while before I had the honor of a seat iti' 
this house. At that period the necessity was established of keeping 
up no less than twenty new regiments, with twenty colonels capable 
of scats in this house. This scheme was adopted Avith very general 
applause from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests iu 
America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of the world 
■was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over. When this huge 
increase of military establishment was resolved on, a revenue was to 
be found to support so great a burthen. Country gentlemen, the 
great patrons of economy, and the great resisters of a standing 
armed force, would not have entered with much alacrity into the vote 
for so large and so expensive an army, if tljey had been very sure 
that they were to continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind 
were held out to them ; and iu particular, I well remember that Mr. 
Townshcnd, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle them, 
by playing before their eyes the in:age of a revenue to be raised in 
America. 

Here began to dawn the first glinnnerings of this new colony 
system. It appeared more distinctly afterwards, when it was de- 
volved upon a person to whom, on other accounts, this country owes 
very great obligations. I do believe, that he had a very serious- 
desire to benefit the public. But with no small study of the detail, 
he did not seem to have his view, at least equally, carried to th& 
total circuit of our affairs. He generally considered his objects in 
lights that were ralher too detached. Whether the business of an 
American revenue was imposed upon him altogether ; whether it 
was entirely the result of his own speculation ; or, what is more 
probable, that his own ideas rather coincided with the instructions he 
had received ; certain it is, that, with the best intentions in the 
world, he first brought this fatal scheme into form, and established it 
by act of parliament. 

No man can believe that at this time of day I mean to lean on the 
venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we deplore in com- 
mon. Our little party difi'erences have been long ago composed ; 
and I have acted more with him, and certainly with more pleasure 
with him, than ever I acted against him. Undoubtedly Mr. Gren- 



EDMUND BURKE. 745 

villc was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine un- 
derstanding and a stout and resolute heart, ho had an application 
iindissipated and unwearied. He took public business not as a duty 
which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy ; and he 
seemed to have no delight out of this house, except in such things as 
some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If 
he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble 
and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low pimp- 
ing politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the 
laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well- 
earned rank in parliament by a thorough knowledge of its constitu- 
tion and a perfect practice in all its business. 

Sir, if such a man fell into errors it must be from defects not in- 
trinsical ; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his 
life ; which, though they do not alter the ground-work of character, 
yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession. He 
was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and no- 
blest of human sciences ; a science which does more to quicken and 
invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of learning put 
together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to 
open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. 
Passing from that study he did not go very largclj^ into the world, 
but plunged into l)usiiicss ; I mean into the business of office ; and the 
limited and fixed methods and forms established there. Much knowl- 
edge is to be had undoubtedly in that line ; and there is no knowl- 
edge which is not valuable. But it may be truly said that men too 
much conversant in office are rarely minds of remarkable enlarge- 
ment. Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think the 
substance of business not to be much moi'e important than the forms 
in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted to ordinary oc- 
casions ; and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admir- 
ably well as long as things go on in their common order; but when 
the high roads are broken up and the waters out, when a new and 
troulilcd scene is opened and the file affords no precedent, then it is 
that a greater knowledge of mankind and a far more extensive com- 
prehension of things is requisite tiiaii ever office gave or than office can 
ever give. Mr. Grcnvillo thougiit better of the wisdom and power 
of human legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and 



746 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

many conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade of this 
country was greatly owing to hiw and institution, and not quite so 
mucli to liberty ; for but too many are apt to believe regulation to be 
commerce, and taxes to be revenue. Among regulations, that which 
stood first in reputation was his idol. I mean the act of navigation. 
He has often professed it to be so. The policy of that act is, I 
readily admit, in many respects well understood. But I do say that 
if the act be sufiered to run the full length of its principle, and is not 
changed and modified according to the ciiange of times and the fluc- 
tuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief and frequently 
even defeat its own purpose. 

After the war, and in the last year of it, the trade of America had 
increased far beyond the speculations of the most sanguine imagina- 
tions. It swelled out on every side. It filled all ils proper 
channels to the brim. It overflowed with a rich redundance, and 
breaking its banks on the right and on the left, it spread out upon 
some places where it M'as indeed improper, upon others where it was 
only irregular. It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact ; and 
great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses. The 
contraband will always keep pace in some measure with the fair 
trade. It should stand as a fundamental maxim that no vulgar pre- 
caution ought to be employed in the cure of evils which are closely 
connected with the cause of our prosperity. Perhaps this great 
person turned his eye somewhat less than was just towards the in- 
credible increase of the fair trade, and looked with something of too 
exquisite a jealousy towards the contraband. He certainly felt a 
singular degree of anxiety on the subject, and even began to act 
from that passion earlier than is commonl}' imagined. For whilst 
he was first lord of the admiralty, though not strictly called upon in 
his oflicial line, he presented a very strong memorial to the lords of 
the treasury (my lord Bute was then at the head of the ])oard), 
heavily complaining of the growth of the illicit commerce in Amevici. 
Some mischief happened even at that time from this over-earnest 
zeal. Much greater happened afterwards when it operated with 
greater power in the highest department of the finances. The bonds 
of the act of navigation were straitened so much that America was 
on the point of having no trade, either contraband or legitimate. 
They found, under the construction and execution then used, the act 



EDMUND BURKE. 747 

no longer tying, but actually strangling them. All this coming with 
new enumerations of commodities ; with regulations which in a 
manner put a stop to the mutual coasting intercourse of the colonies ; 
■with the appointment of courts of admiralty under various improper 
circumstances ; with a sudden extinction of the paper currencies ; 
with a compulsory provision for the quartering of soldiers, the 
people of America thought themselves proceeded against as delin- 
quents, or at best as people under suspicion of delinquency ; and iu 
such a manner as, they imagined, their recent services in the war did 
not at all merit. Any of these innumerable regulations, perhaps, 
would not have alarmed alone ; some might be thought reasonable, 
the multitude struck them with terror. 

But the grand raancEuvro in that business of new regulating the 
colonies was i he 15th act of the fourth of George III., which, be- 
sides containing several of the matters to which I have just alluded, 
opened a new principle ; and here properly began the second period 
of the policy of this country with regard to the colonies ; by which 
the scheme of a regular plantation parliamentary revenue was adopted 
iu theory and settled in practice. A revenue not substituted in the 
place of, but superadded to, a monopoly ; which monopoly was en- 
forced at the same time with additional sti'ictness, and the execution 
put into military hands. 

This act, sir, had for the first time the title of granting duties in 
the colonies and plantations of America, and for the first time it was 
asserted in the preamble that it was just and necessary that a revenue 
should be raised. Then came the technical words of giving and 
granting, and thus a complete American revenue act was made in 
all the forms, and with a full avowal of tlie right equity policy, and 
even necessity of taxing the colonies without any formal consent of 
theirs. There are contained also in the preamble to that act these 
very remai'kable woi'ds — the commons, &c., "being desirous to make 
some provision in the present session of parliament towards raising 
the said revenue." By these words it appeared to the colonies that 
this act was but a beginning of sorrows ; that every session was to 
produce something of the same kind ; that we were to go on from 
day to day in charging them with such taxes as we pleased, for such 
a military force as we should tliink proper. Had this plan been pur- 
sued, it was evident that the provincial assemblies in which the 



748 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Americans felt all their poi-tion of importance, and beheld their sole 
image of freedom, were Ipso facto annihilated. This ill prospect 
before them seemed to be boundless in extent and endless in dura- 
tion. Sir, they Avere not mistaken. The ministry valned them- 
selves \vhcn this act passed, and when they gave notice of the 
stamp act, that both of the duties came very short of their ideas of 
American taxation. Great was the a[)planse of this measure here. 
In England we cried out for new taxes on Amei'ica, whilst they cried 
out that they were nearly crushed with those which the war and their 
own grants had brongiit upon them. 

Sir, it has been said in the debate that when tlie first American 
revenue act (the act of 17G4 imposing the port duties) passed, the 
Americans did not object to the principle. It is true they touched 
it but very tendei-ly. It was not n direct attack. They were, it is 
true, as yet novices ; as yet unaccustomed to direct attacks upon any 
of the rights of parliament. The duties were port duties, like those 
they had been accustomed to bear, with this difference, that the title 
was not the same, the preamble not the same, and the spirit alto- 
gether unlike. But of what service is this observation to the cause 
of those that make it? It is a full refutation of the pretence for their 
jircsent cruelty to America; for it shows, out of their own mouths, 
that our colonies were backward to enter into the present vexatious 
and ruinous controversy. 

There is also another circulation abroad (spread with a malignant 
intention, which I cannot attribute to those who say the same thing 
in this house), that Mr. Grenvillo gave the colony agents an option 
for their assemblies to tax themselves, which they had refused. I 
find that much stress is laid on this, as a fiict. However, it happens 
neither to be true nor possible. I will observe first, that Mr. Gren- 
ville never thought fit to make this apology for himself in the innu- 
merable debates that were had upon the subject. He might have 
proposed to the colony agents that they should agree in some mode 
of taxation as the ground of an act of parliament. But he never 
could have proposed that they should tax themselves on requisition, 
which is the assertion of the day. Indeed, Mr. Grenville well knew 
that the colony agents could have no general powers to consent to 
it; and they had no time to consult their assemblies for particular 
powers before ho passed his first revenue act. If you compare dates 



EDMUND BURKE. 749 

you will find it impossible. Burthened as tbe agents knew the col- 
onies were at that time, they could not give the least hope of such, 
grants. His own favorite governor was of opinion that the Ameri- 
cans were not then ta.xable objects : 

" Nor was the time less favorable to the equity of such a taxation. 
T don't mean to dispute the reasonableness of America contributing 
to the charges of Great Bi'itain when she is able ; nor, I believe, 
would the Americans themselves have disputed it, at a proper time 
and season. But it siiould be considered, that the American gov- 
ernments themselves have, in the prosecution of the late war, con- 
tracted very large debts, which it will take some years to pa}' off, 
and in the meantime occasions very burdensome taxes for that pur- 
pose only. For instance, this government, which is as much before- 
hand as any, raises every year £37,500 sterling, for sinking tlicir 
debt, and must continue it for four years longer at least before it 
will be clear." 

These are the words of Governor Bernard's letter to a member of 
the old ministry, and which he has since printed. Mr. Grcnville 
could not have made this projiosition to the agents, fen- anotlicr rea- 
son. He was of opinion, which he has declared in this house an 
hundred times, that the colonies could not legally grant any revenue 
to the crown ; and that infinite mischiefs would be the consequence 
of snch a power. When Mr. Grenville had passed the first revenue 
act, and in the same session had made this house come to a resolu- 
tion for laying a stamp duty on America, lietween that time and the 
passing the stamp act into a law, he told a considerable and most 
respectal)le merchant, a member of this house, whom I am truly 
sorry I do not now see in his place, when he represented against this 
proceeding, that if the stamp duty was disliked, he was willing to 
exchange it for any other equally productive ; l)ut that if he ol>jected 
to the Americans being taxed by parliament, he might save liimself 
the trouble of the discussion, aa he was determined on the measure. 
This is the fact, and if you please, I will mention a very unquestion- 
able authority for it. 

Thus, sir, I have disposed of this falsehood. But falsehood has a 
perennial spring. It is said, that no conjecture could be made of the 
dislike of the colonies to the principle. This is as untrue as the 
other. After the resolution of the house, and before the passing of 



750 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the stamp act, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and New York did 
send remonstrances, objecting to this mode of parliamentary taxation. 
What was the consequence ? They were suppressed ; they were put 
under the table ; notwithstanding an order of council to the contrary, 
by the ministry which composed the very council that had made the 
order ; and thus the house proceeded to its business of taxing with- 
out the least regular knowlege of the objections which were made to 
it. But to give that house its due, it was not over desirous to 
receive information, or to hear remonstrance. On the 15th of Feb- 
ruary, 1765, whilst the stamp act was under deliberation, they 
refused with scorn even so much as to receive four petitions pre- 
sented from so respectable colonies as Connecticut, Rhode Island, 
Virginia and Carolina; besides one from the traders of Jamaica. As 
to the colonies, they had no alternative left them but to disobey, or 
to pay the taxes imposed by that parliament which was not suffered, 
or did not suffer itself, even to hear them remonstrate upon the sub- 
ject. 

This was the state of the colonies before his majesty thought fit 
to change his ministers. It stands upon no authority of mine. It is 
proved by uncontrovertible records. The honorable gentlemen has 
desired some of us to lay our hands upon our hearts, and answer to 
his queries upon the historical part of this consideration ; and by his 
manner (as well as my eyes could discern it) he seemed to address 
himself to me. 

Sir, I will answer him as clearly as I am able, and with great 
openness; I have nothing to conceal. In the year sixty-five, being 
in a very private station, far enough from any line of l)usiness, and 
not having the honor of a seat in this house, it was my fortune, un- 
knowing and unknown to the then ministry, by the intervention of a 
common friend, to become connected with a very noble pei'son, and 
at the head of the treasury department. It was indeed a situation 
of little rank and no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity of my 
talents and pretensions. But a situation near enough to enable me 
to see, as well as others, what was going on ; and I did see in that 
noble person such sound principles, such an enlargement of mind, 
such clear and sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude, as have 
bound me, as well as others much better than I, by an inviolable 
attachment to him from that time forward. Sir, Lord Kockingham, 



EDMUND BURKE. 751 

very early in that summer, received a strong representation from 
many weighty English merchants, and manufacturers, from gover- 
nors of provinces and commanders of men-of-war, against almost tho 
whole of tho American commercial regulations, and particularly with 
regard to the total ruin which was threatened to tiic Spanish trade. 
I believe, sir, the nohle lord soon saw his way in this business. 
But ho did not rashly determine against acts which, it might be sup- 
posed, were the result of much deliberation. However, sir, ho 
scarcely began to open the ground, when the whole veteran body of 
ofEce took the alarm. A violent outcry of all (except those who 
knew and felt tlie mischief) was raised against any aUerati(;u. On 
one hand, his attempt was a direct violation of treaties and public 
law. On the other, the act of navigation and all the corps of trade 
laws were drawn up in array against it. 

The first step the noble lord took, was to have the opinion of his 
excellent, learned, and ever-lamented friend, the late Mr. Yorke, 
then attorney-general, on the point of law. When he knew that 
formally and oliicially, which in substance he had known before, he 
immediately dispatched orders to redress the grievance. But I will 
say it for the then minister, he is of that constitution of mind, that 
I know he would have issued, on the same critical occasion, tiie very 
same orders, if the acts of trade had been, as they were not, di- 
rectly against him ; and would have cheerfully submitted to the 
equity of parliament for his indenmity. 

On the conclusion of this business of the Spanish trade, the news 
of the troubles, on account of the stamp-act, arrived in England. 
It was not until the end of October that these accounts were re- 
ceived. No sooner had the sound of that mighty tempest reached 
us in England, than the whole of tho then opposition, instead of 
feeling humbled by the unhappy issue of their measures, seemed to 
be infinitely elated, and cried out that the ministry, from envy to 
the glory of their predecessors, were prepared to repeal the stamp- 
act. Near nine years after, the honorable gentleman takes quite 
opposite ground, and now challenges me to put my hand to my 
heart, and say, Avhether the ministry had resolved on the appeal till 
a considerable time after the meeting of parliament. Though I do 
uot very well know what the honorable gentleman wishes to infer 
from the admission, or from the denial of this fact, on which he so 



752 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

earnestly adjures me ; I do put my hand on my heart and assure 
liim, that they did not come to a resohitiou directly to repeal. They 
weighed this matter as its difEculty and importance required, they 
considered maturely among themselves, they consulted with all who 
CDuld give advice or information. It was not determined until a, 
little before the meeting of parliament, but it was determined ; and 
the main lines of their own plan marked out before that mecling. 
Two questions arose (I hope I am not going into a narrative trouble- 
some to the house) — 

A cry of, " Go on, go on." 

— The first of the two considerations was, whether the repeal should 
be total, or whether only partial ; taking out everything burthen- 
some and productive, and reserving only an empty acknowledgment, 
such as a stamp on cards or dice. The other question was, on what 
principle should the act be repealed? On this head also two princi- 
ples were started : One, that the legislative rights of this country, 
■svith regard, to America, were not entire, but had certain restrictions 
and limitations. The other principal was, that taxes of this kind 
were contrary to the fundamental principles of commerce on which 
the colonies Avere founded ; and contrary to every idea of political 
equity, l)y which equity we arc bound, as much as possible, to ex- 
tend the spirit and ))enelit of the British constitution to every part 
of the British dominions. The option both of the measure, and of 
the principle of repeal, was made before the session ; and I wonder 
how any one can rend the king's speech at the opening of that ses- 
sion, without seeing in that speech both the repeal and the declara- 
tory act very sufiiciently crayoned out. Those who cannot see this 
can see nothing. 

Surely the honorable gentleman will not think that a great deal 
less time than was then employed, ought to have been spent in de- 
liberation ; when he considers that the news of the troui)les did not 
iirrivc till towards the end of October. The parliament sat to fill 
the vacancies on the 14th day of December, and on business the 
14th of the following January. 

Sir, a partial repeal, or, as the bon ion of the court then was, a 
moditication, would have satisfied a timid, uns3stematic, procrasti- 
nating ministry, as such a measure has since done such a ministiy. 



EDMUND BURKE. 753 

A modification is the constant resource of weak undeciding minds. 
To repeal by a denial of our riglit to tax in the preamble (and this 
too did not want advisers), would have cut, in the heroic stylo, the 
Gordian knot witii a sword. Either measure would have cost no 
more than a day's del)ate. But when the total repeal was adoijtcd, 
and adopted on principles of policy, of equity, and of connnerce ; 
this plan made it necessary to enter into many and difficult meas- 
ures. It became necessary to open a very large field of evidence 
commensurate to these extensive views. But then this labor did 
knight's service. It opened the eyes of several to the true state of 
the American affairs, it enlarged their ideas, it removed prejudices, 
and it conciliated the opinions and afiections of men. The noble 
lord who tiien took the lead in administration, my honorable friend 
.under me, and a right honorable gentleman (if lie will not reject 
Lis share, and it was a large one, of this business), exerted the most 
laudable industry in bringing before j'ou the fullest, most impartial, 
and least-garbled body of evidence that ever was produced to this 
house. 1 think the inquiry lasted in the committee for six weeks ; 
and at its conclusion this house, by an independent, noble, spirited, 
and unexpected majority; by a majority that will redeem ad the 
acts ever done by majorities in parliament; in the teeth of all the 
■old mercenary Swiss of state, in despite of ail the speculators niid 
augurs of political events, in defiance of the a\ hole embattled legion 
of veteran pensioners and practised instruments of a court, gave a 
total repeal to the stamp-act, and (if it had been so permitted) a 
lasting peace to this whole empire. 

I state, sir, these p.irticiilars, because this act of spirit and forti- 
tude has lately been in the circulation of the season, and in sonic 
hazardous declamations in this house, attributed to timidity. If, 
sir, the conduct of the ministry in proposing the repeal, had arisen 
from timidity with regard to themselves, it would have been greatly 
to be condemned. Interested timidity disgraces as much in the 
<?abiiiet, as pei'sonal timidity does in the field. But timidity with 
regard to the well-being of our country is heroic virtue. The noble 
lord who then conducted affairs, and his woitliy colleagues, whilst 
they trembled at the prospect of such distresses as you have since 
brought upon yourscdves, were not afraid steadily to look in the face 
that glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have 



754 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

blenched. He looked in the face of one of the ablest, and, let me 
say, not the most scrupulous oppositions, that perhaps ever was in 
this house, and withstood it, unaided by even one of the usual 
supports of administration. He did this when he repealed the 
stamp-act. He looked in the face a person he had long respected 
and regarded, and whose aid was then particularly wanting, I mean 
Lord Chatham. He did this when he passed the declaratory act. 

It is now given out for the usual purposes, by the usual emissa- 
ries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the repeal of this act 
until he was bullied into it by Lord Chatham ; and the reporters 
have gone so far as publicly to assert in a hundred companies, that 
the honorable gentleman under the gallery, who proposed the repeal 
in the American committee, had another set of resolutions in his 
pocket directly the reverse of those he moved. These ai'titices of a 
desperate cause are at this time spread abroad, with incredible care, 
in every part of the town, from the highest to the lowest companies ; 
as if the industry of the circulation were to make amends for the 
absurdity of the report. 

Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be bullied by 
Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to those who know 
him. I confess, when I look back to that time, I consider him ;is 
placed in one of the most trying situations in which, perhaps, any 
man ever stood. In the house of peers there were very few of the 
ministry, out of the noble lord's own particular connection (except 
Lord Egmont, who acted, as far as I could discern, an honorable 
and manly jiart) , that did not look to some other future arrangement 
which warped his politics. There were in both houses new and 
menacing appearances, that might very naturally drive any other 
than a most resolute minister, from his measure or from his station. 
The household troops openly revolted. The allies of ministry 
(those I mean, who supported some of their measures, but refused 
responsibility for any) endeavored to undermine their credit, and to 
take ground that must be fiital to the success of the very cause which 
they would be thought to countenance. The question of repeal was 
brought on by ministry iu the committee of this house, in the very 
instant when it was known that more than one court negociation was 
carrying on with the heads of the opposition. Everything, upon 
every side, was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook, heaven 



EDMUND BUKKE. 755 

above menaced, all the elements of ministerial safety were dis- 
solved. It was in the midst of this chaos of plots and counterplots, 
it was in the midst of this complicated warfai'e against public oppo- 
sition and private treachery, that the firmness of that noble person 
was put to the proof. He never stirred from his ground, no, not an 
inch. He remained fixed and determined, in principle, in measure, 
and in conduct. He practised no managements. He secured no 
retreat. He sought no apology. 

I will likewise do justice, I ought to do it, to the honorable gen- 
tleman who led us in this house. Far from the duplicity wickedly 
charged on him, he acted his part with alacrity and resolution. We 
all felt inspired by the example he gave us, down even to myself, 
the Aveakest in that phalanx. I declare for one, I knew well 
enough (it could not be concealed from any body) the true state of 
things ; but, in my life, 1 never came with so much spirits into this 
house. It was a time for a man to act in. We had powerful ene- 
mies, but we had faithful and determined friends, and a glorious 
cause. We had a gi'eat battle to fight, but we had the means of 
fighting ; not as now, when our arms are tied behind us. Wc did 
fight that day, and conquer. 

I remember, sir, with a melan«holj' pleasure, the situation of the 
honorable gentleman who made the motion for the repeal ; in that 
crisis, when the whole trading interest of this empire, crammed 
into your lobbies, with a trembling and anxious expectation, waited 
almost to a winter's return of light, their fate from your resolutions. 
When, at length, you had determined in their favor, and your doors 
thrown open, showed them the figure of their deliverer in the well- 
earned triumph of his important victorj% from the whole of that 
grave multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and 
transport. They jumped upon him like children on a long absent 
father. They clung about him as CMptives about their i-edeemer. 
All England, all America, joined to his applause. Nor did he seem 
insensible to the best of all earthly rewards, the love and admiration 
of his fellow-citizens. Hope elevated and joy brightened his crest. 
I stood near him, and his face, to use the expression of the Scrip- 
ture of the first martyr, " his face was as if it had been the face of an 
angel." I do not know how others feel, but if I had stood in that 
situation, I never would have exchanged it for all that kings in their 



756 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

profusion could bestow. I did liope tliat tliat daj^'s danger and honor 
would have been a bond to hold us all together for ever. But, alas ! 
that, with other pleasing visions, is long since vanished. 

Sir, this act of supreme magnanimity has been represented, as if 
it had been a measure of an administration, that, having no scheme 
of their own, took a middle line, pilfered a bit from one side and a 
bit from the other. Sir, they took no middle line. They differed 
fundamentally from the schemes of both parties ; but they preserved 
the objects of both. They preserved the authority of Great Britain. 
They preserved the equity of Great Britain. They made the decla- 
ratory act, they repealed tlie stump act. The}' did both fully, be- 
cause the declaratory act was without qualification ; and the repeal 
of the stamp act total. This they did in the situation I have de- 
scribed. 

Now, Sir, what will the adversary say to both these acts? If the 
principle of tiic declaratory act was not good, the principle we are 
contending for this day is monstrous. If the principle of the repeal 
was not good, why are we not at war for a real, substantial, efi'ectivo 
revenue? If both were bad, why has this ministry incurred all the 
inconveniencies of both and of all schemes? Why have they en- 
acted, repealed, enforced, yielded, and now attempt to enforce 
again ? 

Sir, I think I may as well now, as at any other time, speak to a 
certain matter of fact, not wholly unrelated to the question under 
your consideration. We, who would persuade you to revert to tiio 
ancient policy of this kingdom, labor under the effect of this short 
current phrase which the court leaders have given out to all their 
corps, in order to take away the credit of those who would prevent 
you from that frantic war you are going to wage upon jour colonics. 
Their cant is this, all the disturbances in America have been created 
by the I'cpeal of the stamp-act. I suppress for a moment my indig- 
nation at the falsehood, baseness, and absurdity of this most auda- 
cious assertion. Instead of remarking on the motives and character 
of those who have issued it for circulation, 1 will clearl}' lay before 
you the state of America antccedenti}' to that repeal, after the re- 
peal, and since the renewal of the schemes of American taxation. 

It is said, that the disturbances, if there were any before the 
repeal, were slight, and without difiiculty or inconvenience, might 



EDaiUND BURKE. 757 

have been suppressed. For an answer to this assertion I will send 
you to the great autlior and patron of the stamp-act, who certainly 
meaning well to the authority of this country, and fully apprised of 
the state oi that, made, before a repeal Avas so much as agitated in 
this house, the motion which is on your journals ; and Avhich, to 
save the clerk the trouble of turning to it, I will now read to you. 
It was for an amendment to the address of the 17th of December, 
1765: 

"To express our just resentment and indignation at tlie outrageous tumults and 
insurrections whicli liave Ijeen excited and carried on in Nortli America, and at tlio 
resistance given by open and rebellious force to the execution of the laws in tliat 
part of his majesty's dominions. And to assure his majestj', that his faithful com- 
mons, animated with the warmest duty and attachment to his royal person and 
government, will flrmly and effectually support his majesty in all such measures as 
shall be necessary for preserving and supporting the legal dependence of the col- 
onies on the mother country," &c. 

Here was certainly a disturbance preceding the repeal ; such a 
disturbance as Mr. Greuville thought neccssar}' to qualify by the 
name of an insurrection, and the epithet of a rebellious force : 
terms much stronger than any by Avhich those who then supported 
his motion, have ever since thought proper to distinguish the subse- 
quent disturbances in America. They were disturbances which 
seemed to him and his friends to justify as strong a promise of 
support, as hath been usual to give in the beginning of a war with 
the most powerful and declared enemies. "When the accounts of 
the American governors came before the house, they appeared 
stronger even than the warmth of public imagination had painted 
them; so much stronger that the papers on your table bear mo out 
in saying, that all the late disturbances, which have been at one 
time the minister's motives for the repeal of tive out of six of the 
new court taxes, and are now his pretences for refusing to repeal 
that sixth, did not amount — why do I compare them? — no, not to 
a tenth part of the tumults and violence which prevailed long before 
the repeal of that act. 

Ministry cannot refuse the authority of the Commander-in-chief, 
General Gage, who, in his letter of the 4th of November, from New 
York, thus represents the state of things : 

" It is difficult to say, from the highest to the lowest, who has not been accessory 
to this insurrection, either by writing or mutual agreements to oppose the act, by 



758 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

what they are pleased to term all legal opposition to it. Nothing effectual has been 
proposed, either to prevent or quell the tumult. The rest of the provinces are in 
the same situation as to a positive refusal to take the stamps ; and threatening those 
who shall take them, to plunder and murder them, and this affair stands in all the 
provinces, that unless the act, from its own nature, enforce itself, nothing but a 
very considerable military force can do it." 

It is remarkable, sir, that the persons who formerly trumpeted 
forth the most loudly the violent resolutions of assemblies ; the uni- 
versal insuri'ections ; the seizina: and burning the stamped papers ; 
the forcing stamp officers to resign their commissions under the gal- 
lows ; the ritiing and pulling down of the houses of magistrates ; 
and the expulsion from their country of all who dared to write or 
speak a single word in defence of the powers of parliament ; these 
very trumpeters are now the men that represent the whole as a mere 
trifle ; and choose to date all the disturbances from the repeal of the 
stamp act, which put an end to them. Hear your officers abroad, 
and let them refute this shameless falsehood, who, in all their cor- 
respondence, state the disturbances as owing to their true causes, 
the discontent of the people, from the taxes. You have this evi- 
dence in your own archives — and it will give you complete sat- 
isfaction ; if you are not so far lost to all parliamentary ideas of 
information, as rather to credit the lie of the day, than the records 
of your own house. 

Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when thcj^ are forced into day 
upon one point, are sure to burrow in another ; but they shall have 
no refuge ; I will make them bolt out of all their holes. Conscious 
that they must be baffled, when they attribute a precedent disturb- 
ance to a subsequent measure, they take other ground, almo.st as 
absurd, but very common in modern practice, and very wicked ; 
which is, to attribute the ill eifect of ill-judged conduct to the argu- 
ments which had been used to dissuade us from it. They say, that 
the opposition made in parliament to the stamp act at the time of 
its passing, encouraged the Americans to their resistance. This has 
even formally appeared in print in a regular volume, from an advo- 
cate of that faction, a Dr. Tucker. This Dr. Tucker is already a 
dean, and his earnest lal)ors in this vineyard will, I suppose, raise 
him to a bishoprick. But this assertion too, just like the rest, is 
false. In all the papers which have loaded your table ; in all the 
vast crowd of verbal witnesses that appeared at your bar, witnesses 



EDMUND BURKE. 759 

which were indiscriminately produced from both sides of the house ; 
not the least hint of such a cause of disturbance has ever appeared. 
As to the fact of a strenuous opposition to the stamp act, I sat as a 
stranger in your gallery when the act was under consideration. Far 
from anything inflammatory, I never heard a more languid debate in 
this house. No more than two or three gentlemen, as I remember, 
spoke against the act, and that with great reserve and remarkable 
temper. There was but one division in the whole progress of the 
bill; and the minority did not reach to more than thirty-nine or 
forty. In the house of lords I do not recollect that there was any 
debate or division at all. I am sure there was no protest. In fact, 
the afiair passed with so very, very little noise, that in town they 
scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing. The opposition 
to the bill in England never could have done this mischief, because 
there scarcely ever was less of opposition to a bill of consequence. 

Sir, the agents and distributors of falsehoods have, with their 
usual industry, circulated another lie of the same nature with the 
former. It is this, that the disturbances arose from the account 
which had been received in America of the change in the ministry. 
No longer awed, it seems, with the spirit of the former rulers, they 
thought themselves a match for what our calumniators choose to 
qualify by the name of so feeble a ministry as succeeded. Feeble 
in one sense these men certainly may be called ; for with all their 
efforts, and they have made many, they have not been able to resist 
the distempered vigor and insane alacrity with which you are rush- 
ing to your ruin. But it does so happen, that the falsity of this cir- 
culation is (lilje the rest) demonstrated by indisputable dates and 
records. 

So little was the change known in America, that the letters of 
your governors, giving an account of these disturbances long after 
they had arrived at their highest pitch, were all directed to the old 
ministry, and particularly to the Earl of Halifax, the secretary of 
state corresponding with the colonies, without once in the smallest 
degree intimating the slightest suspicion of any ministerial revolu- 
tion whatsoever. The ministry was not changed in England until 
the 10th day of July, 1765. On the 14th of the preceding June, 
Governor Fauquier from Virginia writes thus ; and writes thus to 
the Earl of Halifax : " Government is set at defiance, not having 



7G0 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

strength enough in her hjinds to enforce obedience to the laws of 
the community. The private distress, which every man feels, in- 
creases the general dissatisfaction ut the duties laid by the stamp 
act, which breaks out, and shows itself upon every trifling occasion." 
The general dissatisfaction had produced some time before, that is, 
on the 29th of May, several strong public resolves against the stamp 
act ; and those resolves are assigned bj- Governor Bernard, as the 
cause of the insurrections in Massachusettr? Bay, in his letter of the 
15th of August, still addressed to the Earl of Halifnx ; and he con- 
tinued to address such accounts to that minister quite to the 7th of 
September of tlic same year. Similar accounts, and of as late a 
date, were sent from other governors, and all directed to Lord Hali- 
fax. Not one of these letters indicates the slightest idea of a change, 
either known, or even apprehended. 

Thus arc blown away the insect race of courtly falsehoods ! thus 
perish the miserable inveiil ions of the wretched runners for a wretched 
cause, which they have fly-blown into every weak and rotten part of 
the country, in vain hopes that when their maggots had taken wing, 
their importunate buzzing might sound something like the public 
voice ! 

Sir, I have troubled 3'ou sufficiently with the state of America be- 
fore the repeal. Now I turn to the honorable gentlemen who so 
stoutly challenges us, to tell, wliether after the repeal the provinces 
were quiet? This is coming home to tlie point. Here I meet him 
directly ; and answer most readily, they were quiet. And I, in my 
turn, challenge him to prove when, and where, and by whom, and 
in what numbers, and with what violence, the other laws of trade, 
as gentlemen assert, were violated in consequence of your conces- 
sion? or that even your other revenue laws were attacked? But I 
quit the vantage ground on which I stand, and where I might leave 
the burden of the proof upon him : I walk down into the open plain 
and undertake to show that they were not only quiet, but showed 
many unequivocal marks of acknowledgment and gratitude. And 
to give him every advantage, I select the obnoxious colony of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, which at this time (but without hearing her) is so 
heavily a culprit before parliament — I will select their proceedings 
even under circumstances of no small irritation. For, a little im- 
prudently, I must say. Governor Bernard mixed in the administration 



EDMUND BURKE. 761 

of the Icnilive of the repeal no small acrimony arising from matters 
of a separate nature. Yet see, sir, the eflect of that lenitive, 
thongli mixed with these hitter ingredients; and how this rugged 
pcoi)lc can express themselves on a measure of concession. 

"If it is not in our power" (say they in their address to Governor 
Bernard), "in so full a manner as will he expected, to show our re- 
spectful gratitude to the mother country, or to make a dutiful and 
allectionato return to tlic indulgence of the king and parliament, it 
shall be no fault of ours; for this wc intend, and hope we shall be 
able fully to eflect." 

AVould to God that this temper had been cultivated, managed, and 
set in action ! other efiects than those which wc have since felt would 
have resulted from it. On the requisition for cdmpensation to those 
who had suffered from the violence of the populace, in the same ad- 
dress, they say : "The recommendation enjoined by Mr. Secrctarj'" 
Conwaj^'s letter, and in consequence thereof made to us, wc will 
embrace the tirst convenient opportunity to consider and act upon." 
They did consider ; they did act upon it. They obeyed the requi- 
sition. I know the mode has been chicaned upon, but it was sub- 
stantiidly obeyed ; and much better obeyed, than I fear the parlia- 
mentary requisition of this session will be, though enforced by all 
your vigor, and backed with all your power. In a word, the damages 
of popidar fury were compensated by legislative gravity. Almost 
every other part of America in various waj's demonstrated their 
gratitude. I am bold to say, that so sudden a calm recovered after 
so violent a storm is without parallel in history. To say that no 
other disturbance should happen from any other cause, is folly. But 
as far as appearances went, by the judicious sacrifice of one law, you 
procured the acquiescence in all that remained. After this experi- 
ence, nobody shall persuade me, when a whole people arc concerned, 
that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation. 

I hope the honorable gentlemen has received a f:ur and full answer 
to his question. 

I have dune with the thii'd period of j-our policy ; that of your 
repeal; and the retui-n of your ancient system, and your ancient 
tranquillity and concord. Sir, this period was not as long as it was 
ha))py. Another scene was opened, and other actors appeared on 
the stage. The state, in the condition I have described it, was de- 



762 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

livered into the hands of Lord Chatham , a great and celebrated name ; 
a name that keeps the name of this countiy respectable in every other 
on the globe. It may be truly called, 

Clarum et venerabile nonien 
Gentibus, et multiim nostra; quodproderat urbi. 

Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his 
superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the 
vast space he fills in the eye of mankind ; and, more than all the rest, 
his fall from power, which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a 
great character, will not sufi'er me to censure any part of his conduct. 
I am afraid to flatter him ; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. 
Let those who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with 
their malevolence. But what I do nqt presume to censure, I may 
have leave to lament. For a wise man he seemed to me at that time, 
to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the free- 
dom of history, and I hope without offence. One or two of these 
maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our un- 
happy species, and surely a little too general, led him into measures 
that were greatly mischievous to himself; and for that reason, among 
others, perhaps fatal to his country ; measuras, the effects of which, 
I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration, so 
checkered and speckled ; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly 
indented and whimsically dovetailed ; a cabinet so variously inlaid ; 
such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a tessellated pavement with- 
out cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; 
patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans; whigs and 
tories ; treacherous friends and open enemies ; that it was indeed a 
very curious show ; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand 
on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared 
at each other, and were obliged to ask : Sir, your name ? Sir, you 
have the advantage of me — Mr. Such-a-one — I beg a thousand 
pardons ! I venture to say, it did so happen that persons had a 
single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each 
other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, 
pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed. 

Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much the 
larger part of his enemies and opposers into power, the confusion was 



EDMUND BURKE. 763 

such, that his owu principles could not possibly have any effect or 
influence in the conduct of affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the 
gout, or if any other cause withdrew him from public cares, princi- 
ples directly the contrary were sure to predominate. When he had 
executed his plan, he had not an inch of ground to stand upon. 
When he had accomplished his scheme of administration, he was no 
longer a minister. 

When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was on 
a wide sea, without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his particular 
friends, who with the names of various departments of ministry, were 
admitted, to seem as if they acted a part under him, with a modesty 
that becomes all men, and with a confidence in him, which was jus- 
tified even in its extravagance by his superior abilities, had never in 
any instance presumed upon any opinion of their own. Deprived of 
his guiding influence, they were whirled about, the sport of every 
gust, and easily driven into any port ; and as those who joined with 
them in manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his 
opinions, measures, and character, and far the most artful and pow- 
erful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, 
unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends ; and instantly they 
turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy. As if it 
were to insult as well as to betray him, even long before the close of 
the first session of his administration, when everything was publicly 
transacted, and with great parade, in his name, they made an act, 
declai ing it highly just and expedient to raise a i^evenue in America. 
For even then, sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, 
and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending 
glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, 
and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant. 

This light, too, is passed and set forever. You understand, to be 
sure, that I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the reproducer of 
this fatal scheme ; whom I cannot even now remember without some 
degree of sensibility. In truth, sir, he was the delight and ornament 
of this house, and the chai-m of every pi-ivate society which he honored 
with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in 
any country, a man of a more pointed and finished wit ; and (where 
his passions were not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and 
penetrating judgment. If he had not so great a stock, as some have 



764 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

had who floinislied formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, he 
knew better by far, than any man I ever was acquainted with, how 
to bring together within a short time, all that was necessary tO' 
establish, to illustrate', and to decorate that side of the question he 
supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully. He par- 
ticularly excelled in a most luminous explanation, and display of his 
subject. His style of argument was neither trite nor vulgar, nor 
subtle and abstruse. He hit the house just between wind and water. 
And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter 
in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the 
preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required; 
to whom he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly 
to the temper of the house ; and he seemed to guide, because he was 
always sure to follow it. 

I beg pardon, sir, if when I speak of this and of other great men, 
I appear to digress in saying something of their characters. In this 
eventful history of the revolutions of America, the characters of such 
men are of much importance. Great men arc the guide-posts and 
landmarks in the state. The credit of such men at court, or in the 
nation, is the sole cause of all the public measure-. It would be an 
invidious thing (most foreign I trust to what you think my dispo- 
tion) to remark the errors into which the authority of great names 
has brought the nation, without doing justice at the same time to the 
great qualities, whence that authority arose. The subject is instruc- 
tive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence 
has gone before them. There are many young members in the house 
(such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never 
saw that prodigy Charles Townshcnd ; nor of course know what a 
ferment he was able to excite in everything by the vinlent ebullition 
of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undouljtedly 
— many of us remember them ; we are this day considering the effect 
of them. But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble 
cause ; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for 
fame ; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He wor- 
shipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared ; but he paid par- 
ticular devotion to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, 
the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals 
that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to obsei've 



EDMUND BURKE. 765 

that this house has a collective character of its own. That character 
too, however imperfect, is not unamiahle. Like all great public col- 
lections of men, you possess a marked love of virtue, and an abhor- 
rence of vice. Bat among vices, there is none, which the house 
abhors in the same degree with obstinacy. Obstinacy, sir, is cer- 
tainly a great vice ; and in tlie changeful state of political affairs it is 
frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very 
unfortunately, that almost the whole line of tlic great and masculine 
"virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and 
•firmness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you 
have so just an abhorrence ; and in their excess all these virtues very 
easily fall into it. He, who paid such a punctillious attention to all 
jour feelings, certainly took care not to shock them by that vice 
which is the most disgustful to you. 

That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased, 
betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. He had voted, 
and in the year 17G5, had been an advocate for the stamp act. 
Things and the disposition of men's minds were changed. In short, 
the stamp act began to ))e no favorite in this house. He therefore 
attended at the private meeting, in which the resolutions moved by 
a. I'igbt honorable gentleman were settled; resolutions leading to 
the repeal. The next day he voted for that repeal ; and he would 
have spoken for it, too, if an illness, (not as was then given out 
a political, but to my knowledge,) a very real illness, had not pre- 
vented it. 

The very next session, as the fashion of this world passcth away, 
the repeal began to be in as bad an odor in this house as the stamp 
Jict had been in the session before. To eimform to the temper Mhich 
began to prevail, and to prevail mostly amongst those most in 
l^ower, he declared, very early in the winter, that a revenue must 
be had out of America. Instantly he was tied down to his engage- 
ments by some, who had no objection to such experiments, when 
made at the cost of persons for whom they had no particubu- regard. 
The whole body of courtiers drove hiui onward. They always talked 
as if the king stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something of 
the kind should be done. 

Here this extraordinary man, then chancellor of the cxchecjuer, 
found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object 



766 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

of his life ; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to 
be wise, is not given to men. However, he attempted it. To ren- 
der the tax palatable to the partizans of American revenue, he made 
a preamble stating the necessity of such a revenue. To close with 
the American distinction, this revenue was external or port-duty ; 
but again, to soften it to the other party, it was a duty of supply. 
To gratify the colonists, it was laid on British manufactures ; to 
satisfy the merchants of Britain, the duty was trivial, and (except 
that on tea, which touched only the devoted East India Company) 
on none of the grand objects of commerce. To counterwork the 
American contraband, the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling 
to threepence. But to secure the favor of those who would tax 
America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with the rest, 
it was levied in the colonies. What need I say more ? This fine- 
spun scheme had the usual fate of all exquisite policy. But the 
original plan of the duties, and the mode of executing that plan, 
both arose singly and solely from a love of our applause. He w^as 
truly the child of the house. He never thought, did, or said any- 
thing but with a view to you. He every day adapted himself to 
your disposition ; and adjusted himself before it as at a looking- 
glass. 

He had observed (indeed it could not escape him) that several per- 
sons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered 
themselves considerable in this house by one method alone. They 
were a race of men (I hope in God the species is extinct) who, when 
they rose in their place, no man living could divine, from any known 
adherence to parties, to opinions, or to principles ; from any order 
or system in their politics ; or from any sequel or connection in 
their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate. It is 
astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, 
called the attention of all parties on such men. All eyes were fixed 
on them, all ears open to hear them ; each party gaped and looked 
alternately for their vote almost to the end of their speeches. While 
the house hung in this uncertainty, now the hear-hims I'ose from this 
side — now they rebellowed from the other ; and that party to whom 
they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always 
received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men 
was a temptation too great to be resisted by one, to whom a single 



EDMUND BURKE. 7(}7 

whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain, than he received 
delight, ill the clouds of it, which daily rose about him from the pro- 
digal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for 
contradictory honors ; and his great aim was to make those agree in 
admiration of him who never agreed in anything else. 

Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this day's debate ; 
from a disposition which, after making an American revenue to 
please one, repealed it to please others, and again revived it in 
hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching something in the ideas 
of all. 

This revenue act of 1767, formed the fourth period of American 
policy. How we have fared since then — what woeful variety of 
schemes have been adopted ; what enforcing, and what repealing ; 
what bullying, and what submitting ; what doing, and undoing ; 
what straining, and what relaxing ; what assemblies dissolved for 
not obeying, and called again without obedience ; what troops sent 
out to quell resistance, and on meeting that resistance, recalled; 
what shiftings, and changings, and jumblings of all kinds of men at 
home, which left no jjossibility of order, consistency, vigor, or even 
so much as a decent unity of color in any one public measure. It is 
a tedious, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it some other 
time ; on a former occasion I tried 3'our temper on a part of it ; for 
the present I shall forbear. 

After all these changes and agitations, your immediate situation 
upon the question on your paper is at length brought to this. You 
have an act of parliament stating, that " it is expedient to raise a 
revenue in America." By a partial repeal you annihilated the 
greatest part of that revenue, which this preamble declares to be so 
expedient. You have substituted no other in place of it. A secre- 
tary of state has disclaimed, in the king's name, all thoughts of such 
a substitution in future. The principle of this disclaimer goes to 
what has been left, as well as what has been repealed. The tax 
which lingers after its companions, (under a preamble declaring an 
American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of support- 
ing the theory of that preamble) militates with the assurance 
authentically conveyed to the colonies ; and is an exhanstless source 
of jealousy and animosity. On this state, which I take to be a fair 
one ; not being able to discern any grounds of honor, advantage. 



768 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

peace, or power, for adhering, either to tlic act or to tlic preamble, 
I shall vote for the question wiiich leads to the repeal of both. 

If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to 
fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice. If yon must 
employ your strength, employ it to ui)liold you in some honoraljle 
right or some profitable wrong. If you are apprehensive that tlic 
concession reconnncnded to \'ou, though proper, should be a means 
of drawing on you further but unreasonable claims, — why then 
employ your force in supporting that reasonable concession against 
those unreasonable demands. Yon will employ it with more grace ; 
with better eflect ; and with great proi)al)Ie concurrence of all the 
quiet and rational pco[)le in the provinces ; who arc now united 
with, and hurried away by, the violent ; having indeed dillerent 
dispositions, but a conmion interest. If you apprehend that on a 
concession you shall be pushed I)y metaphysical process to the 
extreme lines and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is 
this : when 30U have recovered 3'our old, your strong, your tenal)lo 
position, then face about — stop short — do nothing more — reason 
not at all — oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire, 
as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of 
the question ; and you will stand on great, manly, and siu-e gromid. 
On this solid basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds 
towards you. 

Your ministers, in their own and his majesty's name, have already 
alopted the American distinction of internal and external duties. It 
is a distinction, whatever merit it ma\' have, that was originally 
moved by the Americans themselves ; and I think they will acquiesce 
in it, if they are not pushed with too much logic and too little sense, 
in all the consequences. That is, if external taxation be understood, 
as they and you understand it when you please, to be not a distinc- 
tion of geography, but of policy ; that it is a power for regulating 
trade and not for supporting establishments. The distinction, which 
is as nothing with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration 
in practice. Kecover your old ground, and your old tranquillity — 
try it — I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you. 
When confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious "iim- 
inum jus will perish of course. The spirit of praeticabilit}', of mod- 
eration, and nmtual convenience will never call in geometrical 



EDMUND BURKE. 769 

exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable settlement. Consult and 
follow your experience. Let not the long story with which I have 
exercised your patience prove fruitless to your interests. 

For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) that the 
proposition of the honorable gentleman for the repeal could go to 
America without the attendance of the penal bills. Alone I could 
almost answer for its success. I cannot be certain of its reception 
in the bad company it may keep. In such heterogeneous assort- 
ments the most innocent person will lose the efl'ect of his innocency. 
Though yon should send out this angel of peace, yet you are sending 
out a destroying angel too ; and what would be the effect of the 
conflict of these two adverse spirits, or which would predominate 
in the end, is what I dare not say ; whether the lenient measures 
would cause American passion to subside, or the severe would 
increase its fury. All this is in the hand of Providence ; yet now, 
even now, I sliould confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious 
operation of lenity, though working in darkness and in chaos, in 
the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination. I should 
hope it might produce order and beauty in the end. 

Let us, sir, embrace some system or other before we end this 
session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive 
revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain 
this revenue ; settle its quantity ; define its objects ; provide for its 
collection ; and then fight when you have something to fight for. If 
you murder, rob ! If you kill, take possession : and do not appear 
in the character of madmen, as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, 
"bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels 
guide you ! 

Again, and again, revert to your old principles — seek peace and 
ensue it — leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax 
herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor 
attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these 
metaphysical distinctions ; I hate the very sound of them. Leave 
the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born 
of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They and we, and 
their and our ancestors, have been happy under that system. Let 
the memory of all actions, in contradiction to that good old mode, 
on both sides, be extinguished forever. Be content to bind America 



770 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

by laws of trade ; you have' always done it. Let this be your rea- 
son for binding their trade. Do not burthen them by taxes ; you 
were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be your reason 
for not taxing. These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. 
Leave the rest to the schools ; for there only they may be discussed 
with safety. But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisti- 
cate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle 
deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the 
unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will 
teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. 
When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. 
If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which 
will they take? They will cast your sovereignty iu your face. No- 
body will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the 
other side call forth all their ability, let the best of them get up and 
tell me what one chai'acter of liberty the Americans have, and what 
one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their 
property and industry, by all the restraints you can imagine on com- 
merce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you 
choose to impose, without the least share iu granting them. When 
they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them 
to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too ? The Englishman in 
America will feel that this is slavery — that it is legal slaveiy will 
be no compensation, either to his feelings or his understanding. 

A noble lord, who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire of 
ingenuous youth ; and when he has modelled the ideas of a lively 
imagination by further experience, he will be an ornament to his 
country in either house. He has said, that the Americans are our 
children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says, 
that if they are not free in their present state, England is not free ; 
because Manchester, and other considerable places, are not repre- 
sented. So then because some towns in England are not represented, 
America is to have no representative at all. They are " our chil- 
dren," but when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. 
Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various muta- 
tions of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of govern- 
ment, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the 
right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? 



EDMUND BURKE. 771 

When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to 
reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of 
British liberty ; are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our 
constitution ? ai-e we to give them our weakness for their strength, 
our opprobrium for their glory? and the slough of slavery, which we 
are not able to work otf, to serve thom for their freedom ? 

If this be the case, ask yourselves this question : Will they be 
content in such a state of slavery ? If not, look to the consequences. 
Keflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be 
free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue, it 
yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience ; and such is 
the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you 
could only end just where you begun ; that is, to tax where no rev- 
enue is to be found, to — my voice fiiils me ; my inclination indeed 
carries me no further — all is confusion beyoud it. 

Well, sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit down I must 
say something to another point with which gentlemen urge us. What 
is to become of the declaratory act asserting the entireness of Brit- 
ish legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation ? 

For my part I look upon the rights stated in that act, exactly in 
the manner in which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and 
which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay 
before j'ou. I look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, 
and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under these 
rights, to be just the most reconciUdjle things in the world. The 
Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive emph'e 
in two capacities : one as the local legislature of this island, provid- 
ing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument 
than the executive power. The other, and 1 think her nobler capac- 
ity, is what I call her imperial character; in which, as fi'om the 
throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior legisla- 
tures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any. As 
all these provincial legislatures are only co-oi'dinate to each other, 
they ought all to be subordinate to her ; else they can neither pre- 
serve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually 
afibrd mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to 
restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient by the over- 
ruling plenitude of her power. She is never to intrude into the 



772 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

place of the others, whilst they are equal to the common ends of 
their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all 
these ends of pi'ovident and beneficent superintendence, her powers 
must be boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of Par- 
liament limited, may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But 
suppose the requisitions are not obeyed ? What ! Shall there be 
no reserved power in the empire to supply a deficiency which may 
weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? We are engaged in war 
— the secretary of state calls upon the colonies to contribute — some 
would do it, I think most would cheerfully furnish whatever is 
demanded — one or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing them- 
selves, let the stress of the draft lie on the others — surely it is 
proper that some authority might legally saj' — Tax yourselves for 
the common supply, or parliament will do it for 3'ou. This back- 
wardness was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania for 
some short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to 
some internal dissensions in the colony. But, whether the fact were 
so, or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a compe- 
tent foreign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power, 
nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant, when I 
have said at various times that I consider the power of taxing in 
parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of sup- 
ply- 

Such, sir, is my idea of the constitution of the British empire, as 
distinguished from the constitution of Britain ; and on these grounds 
I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently reconciled 
through the whole ; whether to serve a refining speculatist, or a fac- 
tious demagogue, I know not, but enough surely for the ease and 
happiness of man. 

Sir, whilst you held this happy course, we drew more from the 
colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could 
extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war. It has 
never been once denied — and what reason have we to imagine that 
the colonies would not have proceeded in supplying government as 
liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered them from contri- 
buting, by interrupting the channel in which their liberality flowed 
with so strong a course ; by attempting to take, instead of being sat- 
isfied to receive? Sir William Temple says, that Holland has loaded 



EDMUND BURKE. 773 

itself with ten times the impositions which it revolted from Spain, 
rather than submit to. He says true. Tyranny is a poor provider; 
it knows neither how to accumulate nor ho^v to extract. 

I charge, therefore, to this now and unfortunate system the loss 
not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but even of revenue, 
which its friends are contending for. It is morally certain, that we 
have lost at least a million of free grants since the peace. I think 
we have lost a great deal more ; and that those who look for revenue 
from the provinces, never could have pursued, even in that light, a 
course more directly repugnant to their purposes. 

Now, sir, I trust I have shown, first on that naiTow ground which 
the honorable gentleman measured, that you are likely to lose noth- 
ing by complying with the motion, except what you have lost 
already. I have shown afterwards, that in time of peace you flour- 
ished in commerce, and when war required it, had sufficient aid from 
the colonies, while you pursued your ancient policy ; that you threw 
evei-ything into confusion when you made the stamp act ; and that 
you restored everything to peace and order when you repealed it. 
I have shown that the revival of the system of taxation has produced 
the very worst effects ; and that the partial repeal has produced 
not partial good, but universal evil. Let these considerations, 
founded on facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back 
to our reason by the road of our experience. 

I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed measures ; but surely 
this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better chance of suc- 
cess. When you once gain confidence, the way will be clear before 
you. Then you may enforce the act of navigation when it ought 
to be enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought still 
further to be opened. Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, 
from policy, and not from rancor. Let us act like men, let us act 
like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is 
agreed that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the 
profit, let us get rid of the odium. 

On this business of America, I confess I am serious, even to sad- 
ness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, and 
before I sat in parliament. The noble lord will, as usual, probably, 
attribute the part taken by me and my friends in this business, to a 
desire of getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy and original 



774 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take away most of his wit, 
and all his argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, 
and indeed blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God for 
embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very 
best and fairest of his works. But I know the map of England, as 
well as the noble lord, or as any other person ; and I know that the 
■way I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and hon. 
friend under me on the floor (Mr. Dowdeswell) has trod that road 
with great toil for upwards of twenty years together. He is not yet 
arrived at the noble lord's destination. However, the tracks of my 
worthy friend are those I have ever wished to follow ; because I 
know the}"^ lead to honor. Long may we ti'ead the same road 
together, whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us 
on our journey ! I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all 
seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other reason, than 
that I think it laid deep in your truest interests — and that, by limit- 
ing the exercise, it fixes on the firmest foundations, a real, consistent, 
well-grounded authority in parliament. Until you come back to 
that system, there will be no peace for England. 



EDMUND BURKE. 775 



Speech 

On Taking Leave of the Electors of Bristol. 



Although Burke entered on his canvass of the Bristol electors in September, 
1780, with the support of the Mayor and several other leading citizens, he found the 
tide of bigotry and prejudice too strong against him, and accordingly, on the morn- 
ing on which the polling was to commence, he resigned. On this occasion he 
delivered the following graceful speech, perhaps the best-tempered any unsuccessful 
canvasser ever spoke. 

^^ENTLEMEN, — I decline the election. It has ever been my 
^^ rule through life to observe a proportion between my efforts 
^ and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, 
H active and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to 
myself. 

I have not canvassed the whole of this city in form. But I have 
taken such a view of it, as satisfies my own mind, that your choice 
will not ultimately fall upon me. Your city, gentleman, is in a state 
of miserable distraction : and I am resolved to withdra^v whatever 
share my pretensions may have had in its unhappy divisions. I have 
not been in haste ; I have tried all prudent means ; I have waited for 
the effects of all contingencies. If I were fond of a contest, by the 
jaartiality of my numerous friends (whom you know to be among the 
most weighty and respectable people of the city) I have the means 
of a sharp one in my hands. But I thought it far better, with my 
strength unspent, and my reputation unimpaired, to do, early and 
from foresight, that which I might be obliged to do from necessity at 
last. 

[Note. — Burke left Bristol immediately and proceeded to Malton (where he had 
been elected in 1774), for which borough he was immediately returned. He sat for 
Malton during the remainder of his parliamentary career.] 



776 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

I am not in the least surprised, nor in the least angry 'at this view 
of things. I have read the book of life for a long time, and I have 
read other books a little. Nothing has happened to me, but what 
has happened to men much better than I, and in times and in nations 
full as good as the age and country that we live in. To say that I 
am no way concerned, would be neither decent nor true. The repre- 
sentation of Bristol was an object on many accounts dear to me ; and 
I certainly should very far prefer it to any other in the kingdom. 
My habits are made to it ; and it is in general more unpleasant to be 
rejected after long trial, than not to be chosen at all. 

But, gentlemen, I will see nothing except 3-our former kindness, 
and I will give way to no other sentiments than those of gratitude. 
From the bottom of my heart I thank you for what you have done 
for me. You have given mo a long term, which is now expired. I 
have performed the conditions, and enjoyed all the profits to the full ; 
and I now surrender your estate into your hands without being in a 
single tile, or a single stone, impaired or wasted by my use. I have 
served the public for fifteen years. I have served you in particular 
for six. What is passed is well stored. It is safe and out of the 
power of fortune. What is to come, is in wiser hands than ours ; 
and He, in whose hands it is, best knows whether it is best for you 
and mc, that I should be in parliament or even in the world. 

Gentlemen, the melancholy event of j^esterday reads to us an 
awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the 
objects of ordimuy ambition. The worthy gentleman, Mr. Coorabe, 
the candidate who has died suddenly, and who has been snatched 
from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the con- 
test, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, 
has feelingly told us what sliadows we are, and what shadows we 
pursue. 

It has been usual for a candidate who declines to take his leave by 
a letter to the sheriffs, but I received your trust in the face of day ; 
and in the face of day I accept your dismission. I am not, — I am 
not at all ashamed to look upon you ; nor can my presence discom- 
pose the order of business here. I humbly and I'espectfully take my 
leave of the sherifl^s, the candidates and the electors ; wishing heart- 
ily that the choice may be for the best, at a time which calls, if ever 
time did call, for service that is not nominal. It is no plaything you 



EDMUND BURKE. 777 

are about. I tremble when I consider the trust I have presumed to 
ask. I confided perhaps too much in my intentions. They were 
really fair and upright ; and I am bold to say, that I ask no ill 
thing for you, when on parting from this place I pray that whomso- 
ever you choose to succeed me, he may resemble me exactly in all 
things, except in my abilities to serve, and my fortune to please 
you. 



778 TREASURSr OF ELOQUENCE. 



Select Passages 

From Burke's Speeches on the Impeachment of Warren 
Hastings. 



Burke spoke three times during tlie trial of Hastings. He opened the impeach- 
ment in February, 1788, in a speech which lasted for several days, containing several 
passages of surpassing power. He also spoke to one of the charges in 1789, and 
replied to the defence in 1794. Our limits do not permit us to give to the reader 
these orations, but we cannot refrain from presenting to his notice some of the most 
striking passages. 

The following passage in reply to Hastings' statement, that to govern Hindostan 
properly it was necessary to make use of arbitrary power, is very fine. 

^i^ASTINGS, the lieutenant of a British monarch, claiming abse- 
il lute dominion ! From whom, in the name of all that \tas 
strange, could he derive, or how had he the audacity to 
claim, such authority? He could not have derived it from 
the East India Company, for they had it not to confer. He could 
not have received it from his sovereign, for the sovereign had it not 
to bestow. It could not have been given by either house of parlia- 
ment, for it was unknown to the British constitution ! Yet Mr. 
Hastings, acting under the assumption of this power, had avowed 
his rejection of British acts of parliament, had gloried in the success 
which he pretended to derive from their violation, and had on every 
occasion attempted to justify the exercise of arbitrary power in its 
greatest extent. Having thus .avowedly acted in opposition to the 
laws of Great Britain, he sought a shield in vain, in other laws and 
otiier usages. Would he appeal to the Mahomcdan law for his jus- 
tificalion':' In the whole Koran there was not a single text which 
could justify the powei- he had assumed. Would he appeal to the 
Gentoo code ? Vain there the effort also ; a .system of stricter justice, 
or more pure morality, did not exist. It was, therefore, equal whether 
he fled for shelter to a British court of justice or a Gentoo pagoda ; 



EDMUND BURKE. 779 

he in either instance stood convicted as a daring violator of the laws. 
And what, my lords, is opposed to all this practice of tyrants and 
usurpers, which Mr. Hastings takes for his i-ule and guidance? He 
endeavors to find deviations from legal government, and then in- 
structs his counsel to say that I have as.serted there is no such thing 
as arbitrary power in the East. But, my lords, we all know that 
there has been arbitrary power in India ; that tyrants have usurped 
it ; and that in some instances princes, otherwise meritorious, have 
violated the liberties of the people, and have been lawfully deposed 
for such violation. I do not deny that there are robberies on Houns- 
low Heath, that there are such things as forgeries, burglaries, and 
murders ; but I say that these acts are against law, and whoever 
commits them commits illegal acts. When a man is to defend him- 
self against a charge of crime, it is not instances of similar violation 
of law that are to be the standard of his defence. A man may as 
•well say, "I robbed upon Hounslow Heath, but hundreds I'obbed 
there before me ; " to Avhich I answer, " The law has forbidden you to 
rob there, and I will hang you for having violated the law, notwith- 
standing the long list of similar violations which you have produced 
as precedents." No doubt princes have violated the laws of this 
coiuitry ; they have suflered for it. Nobles have violated the law : 
their privileges have not protected them from punishment. Common 
people have violated the law ; they have hanged for it. I know no 
human being exempt from the law. The law is a security of the 
people of England ; it is the security of the people of India ; it is 
the security of every person that is governed, and of every person 
that governs. There is but one law for all, namely, that law which 
governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, jus- 
tice, equity — the law of nature and of nations. So far as any laws 
fortify this primeval law, and give it more precision, more energy, 
more effect by their declarations, such laws enter into the sanctuarj^ 
and participate in the sacredness of its character. But the man who 
quotes as precedents the abuses of tj'rants and robbers, pollutes the 
very fountain of justice, destro\'s tiie foundation of all law, and thereby 
removes the only safeguard against evil men, whether governing or 
governed — tlie guard which prevents governors from becoming 
tyrants, and the govei'ued from becoming rebels. 



780 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



The following harrowing description of the cruelties perpetrated by Debi Sing, 
one of Hastings' official servants, is perhaps without parallel in the language. It is 
said that several ladies fainted at this part of Burke's oration. 

Debi Sing and his instruments suspected — and in a few cases 
they suspected justly — that the country people had purloined from 
their own estates, and had hidden in secret places in the circumjacent 
deserts, some small reserve of their own grain to maintain themselves, 
during the unproductive months of the year, and to leave some hope 
for a future season. But the under tyrants knew that the demands 
of Mr. Hastings would admit no plea for dela}^ much less for sub- 
tracti(m of his bribe, and that he would not abate a shilling of it to 
the wants of the whole human race. These hoards, real or supposed, 
not being discovered by menaces and imprisonment, they fell upou 
the last resource, the naked bodies of the people. And here, my 
lords, began such a scene of cruelties and tortures, as I believe no 
history has ever presented to the indignation of the world ; such as I 
am sure, in the most barbarous ages, no politic tyranny, no fanatic 
persecution, has everyet exceeded. Mr. Pattei'son, the commissioner 
appointed to inquire into the state of the country, makes his own 
apology and mine for opening this scene of horrors to you in the fol- 
lowing woi'ds : " That the punishments inflicted upon the r^'ots both 
of Kungpore and Dinagepore for non-payment were in many instances 
of such a nature, that I would rather wish to draw a veil over them 
than shock 3-our feelings by the detail. But that, however disngree- 
able the task may be to myself, it is absolutely necessary for the 
sake of justice, humanity, and the honor of government, that they 
should be exposed, to be prevented in future." 

My lords, they began by winding cords round the fingers of the 
unhappy freeholders of those provinces, until they clung to and 
were almost incorporated with one another ; and then they hammered 
wedges of iron between them, until, regardless of the cries of the 
sufferers, they had bruised to pieces, and for ever crippled tliose poor, 
honest, innocent, laborious hands, which had never been raised to 
their mouths but with a penurious and scanty proportion of the fruits 
of their own soil ; but those fruits (denied to the wants of their own 
children) have for more than fifteen years past furnished tiie invest- 
ment for our trade with China, and been sent annually out, and 



EDMUND BURKE. 73I 

without recompense, to purchase for us that delicate meal, with 
which your lordships, and all this auditory, and all this country have 
begun every day for these fifteen years at their expense. To those 
beneficent hands that labor for our benefit, the return of the British 
government has been cords and wedges. But there is a place where 
these crippled and disabled hands will act with resistless power. 
What is it that they will not pull down, when they are lifted to 
Heaven against their oppressors? Then what can withstand such 
hands? Can the power that crushed and destroyed them? Power- 
ful in prayer, let us at least deprecate, and thus endeavour to secure 
ourselves from the vengeance which tiiese mashed and disabled 
hands may pull down upon us. My lords, it is an awful considera- 
tion. Let us think of it. 

But to pursue this melancholy but necessary detail. I am next 
to open to your lordships what I am hei'eafter to prove, that the 
most substantial and leading yeomen, the responsible farmers, the 
parochial magistrates and chiefs of villages, were tied two and two 
by the legs together ; and their tormentors throwing them with their 
beads downwards over a bar, beat them on the soles of the feet with 
ratans, until the nails fell from their toes ; and then attacking them 
nt their heads, as they hung downward, as before at their feet, they 
beat them with sticks and other instruments of blind fury, until the 
blood gushed out at their eyes, mouths, and noses. 

Not thinking that the ordinary whips and cudgels, even so ad- 
ministered, were sufficient, to others (and often also to the same, 
who had suffered as I have stated) they applied, instead of ratan 
and bamboo, whips made of the branches of the Bale-tree — a tree 
full of sharp and strong thorns, which tear the skin and lacerate the 
flesh far worse than ordinary scourges. 

For others, exploiting with a searching and inquisitive malice, 
stimulated by an insatiate rapacity, all the devious paths of nature 
for whatever is most unfriendly to man, they made rods of a plant 
highly caustic and poisonous, called Becheltea, every wound of which 
festers and gangrenes, adds double and treble to the present torture, 
leaves a crust of leprous sores upon the body, and often ends in the 
destruction of life itself. 

At night these poor innocent sufferers, those martyrs of avarice 
and extortiou, were brought into dungeons ; and in the season when 



782 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

nature takes refuge in insensibility from all the miseries and cares 
which wait on life, they were three times scourged, and made to 
reckon the watches of the night by periods and intervals of torment. 
They were then led out in the severe depth of winter — which there at 
certain seasons would be severe to any, to the Indians is most severe 
and almost intolerable — they were led out before break of day, and 
stiff" and sore as they were with tiie bruises and wounds of the night, 
were plunged into water; and whilst their jaws clung together with 
the cold, and their bodies were rendered infinitely more sensible, the 
blows and stripes were renewed upon their backs ; and then delivering 
them over to soldiers, they were seat into their farms and villages to 
discover where a few handfuls of grain might be found concealed, or to 
extract some loan from the remnants of compassion and courage not 
subdued in those who had reason to fear that their own turn of tor- 
ment would be next, that they should succeed them in the same 
punishment, and that their very humanity, being taken as a proof 
of their wealth, would subject them (as it did in many cases subject 
them) to the same inhuman tortures. After this circuit of the day 
through their plundei'ed and ruined villages, they were remanded at 
night to the same prison ; whipped as before at their return to the 
dungeon, and at morning whipped at their leaving it ; and then sent 
as before to purchase, by begging in the day, the reiteration of the 
torture in the night. Days of menace, insult and extortion — nights 
of bolts, fetters, and flagellation — succeeded to each other in the 
same round, and for a long time made up all the vicissitudes of life 
to these miserable people. 

But there are persons whose fortitude could bear their own 
suifering, there are men who are hardened by their very pains ; and 
the mind strengthened even by the torments of the body, rises with 
a strong defiance against its oppressor. They were assaulted on the 
side of their sympathy. Children were scourged almost to death in 
the presence of their parents. This was not enough. The son and 
father wei'e bound close together, face to face, and body to body, 
and in that situation cruelly lashed together, so that the blow which 
escaped the father fell upon the son, and the blow which missed the 
son wound over the back of the parent. The circumstances were 
combined by so subtle a cruelty, that every stroke which did not 



EDMUND BURKE. 783 

excruciate the sense should wound and lacei-ate the sentiments and 
affections of nature. 

On the same principle, and for the same ends, virgins who had 
never seen tlie sun were dragged from the inmost sanctuaries of their 

houses Wives were torn from the arms of their husbands, 

and suffered the same flagitious wi'ongs, which were indeed hid in 
the bottoms of the dungeons, in which their honor and their liberty 
were buried together. 

The women thus treated lost their caste. My Lords, we are not 
here to commend or blame the institutions and prejudices of a whole 
race of people, radicated in them by a long succession of ages, on 
which no reason or argument, on which no vicissitude of things, no 
mixture of men, or foreign conquests have been able to make the 
smallest impression. The aboriginal Gentoo inhabitants are all dis- 
persed into tribes or caste, each caste born to have an invariable 
rank, rights, and descriptions of employment ; so that one caste can- 
not by any means pass into another. With the Gentoos certain im- 
purities or disgraces, though without any guilt of the party, infer 
loss of caste ; and when the highest caste (that of the Brahmin, 
which is not only noble but sacred,) is lost, the person who loses it 
does not slide down into one lower but reputable — he is wholly 
driven from all honest society. All the relations of life are at once 
dissolved. His parents are no longer his parents, his wife is no 
longer his wife, his children, no longer his, are no longer to regard 
him as their father. It is something far worse than complete out- 
lawry, complete attainder, and universal excommunication. It is a 
pollution even to touch him, and if he touches any of his old caste 
they are justified in putting him to death. Contagion, leprosy, 
plague are not so much shunned. No honest occupation can be fol- 
lowed. He becomes an Halichore, if (which is rare) he sui'vives 
that miserable degradation. 

Your lordships will not wonder that these monstrous and oppres- 
sive demands, exacted with such tortures, threw the whole province 
into despair. They abandoned their crops on the ground. The 
people in a body would have fled out of its confines ; but bands of 
soldiers invested the avenues of the province, and making a line of 
circumvallation, drove back those Avretches, who sought exile as a 
relief, into the prison of their native soil. Not suffered to quit the 



784 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

district, they fled to the many wild thickets which oppression had 
scattered through it, and sought amongst the jungles and dens of 
tigers a refuge from the tyranny of Warren Hastings. Not able long 
to exist here, pressed at once by wild beasts and famine, the same 
dcsi)air drove them back ; and seeking their last rcsDurce in arms, the 
most quiet, the most passive, the most timid of the human race rose 
up in an universal insurrection, and (what will always happen in 
popular tumults) the effects of the fury of the people fell on the 
meaner and sometimes the reluctant instruments of the tyranny, M'ho 
in several places were massacred. The insurrection began in Kung- 
pore, and soon spread its fire to the neighboring provinces, which 
had been harassed by the same person with the same oppressions. 
The English chief in that province had been the silent witness, most 
probably the abettor and accomplice of all these horrors. He called 
in first irregular and then regular troops, who, by dreadful and uni- 
versal military execution, got the better of the impotent resistance of 
unarmed and undisciplined despair. I am tired with the detail of the 
cruelties of peace. I spare you those of a cruel and inhuman war, 
and of the executions which, without law or process, or even the 
shadow of authority, were ordered by the English revenue chief in 
that province. 



The following Is the peroration of Mr. Burke's wonderful effort on this great 
occasion. 

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy 
upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to 
you. 

My lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national 
justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of 
oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated 
provinces and of wasted kingdoms. 

Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much 
iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my lords, you 
must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. 
Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish 
such another delinquent. 

My lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the 



EDMUND BUKKE. 735 

Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors, and I believe, my lords, 
that the sun in his beneficent progress round the world docs not 
•behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a 
remote people by the material bonds and barriers of nature, united 
by the bond of a social and moral community — all the Commons of 
England resenting as their own the indignities and cruelties that aro 
offered to all the people of India. 

Do we want a tribunal? My lords, no example of antiquity, 
notliiiig in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imao^i- 
nation, can supply us with u tribunal like this. My lords, hero we 
see virtually in the mind's eye that sacred majesty of the crown, 
under whoso authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We 
sec in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, 
the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his majesty. We 
have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of 
the people of England wish an heir-apparent to the crown to be. 
We have here all the branches of the royal family in a situation be- 
tween majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject, 
offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the 
crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they 
touch. My lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here — those 
who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their 
posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they always have justi- 
fied, that provision in the constitution by which justice is made an 
hereditary ofEce. My lords, we have here a new nobility, who have 
risen and exalted themselves by various mci-its, by great military 
services, which have extended the fame of this country from the 
rising to the setting sun ; we have those who, by various civil 
merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation 
which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of 
their sovereign and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and 
make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were the 
other day upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, 
but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with 
them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law 
— from the place in which they administered high though subordi- 
jiate justice — to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and 



786 ^ TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to strengthen with their votes those principles which have distin- 
guished the courts in which they have presided. 

My lords, you have here also the lights of our religion ; j'ou have 
the bishops of England. My lords, you have that true image of the 
primitive church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, puri- 
tied from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of 
ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representa- 
tives of that religion which says that their God is love, that the very- 
vital spirit of their institution is charity — a religion which so much 
hates oppression, that when the God whom we adore appeared in 
human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, 
but in sympathy with the iow-est of the people, and thereby made it 
a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all 
govei'nment, since the person who was the master of nature chose to 
ajjpear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considera- 
tions which influence them, which animate them, and will animate 
them, against all oppression, knowing that He who is called first 
among them and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and 
of those who feed it, made Himself the servant of all. 

My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the con- 
stituent parts of the body of this house. We know them, we reckon, 
rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of 
humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence that, 
ordered by the Commons, 

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esq., of high crimes and misde- 
meanors. 

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain 
in parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. 

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, 
whose national character he has dishonored. 

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, 
rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has de- 
stroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. 

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of 
justice which he has violated. 

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has 
cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, 
rank, situation, and condition of life. 



EDMUND BURKE. 787 



In April, 1789, Burke delivered another speech against Hastings, in which he 
opened the charge of having taken bribes from the native princes. On this occasion 
the orator spolie for several days, and as usual in a fine strain of eloquence. Much, 
however, of what lie said related to the minute details of the Anglo-Indian govern- 
ment at that period, and therefore does not possess much interest for the readers 
of the present day. 

At the close of the trial Burke spoke for nine days, and his oration on this occa- 
sion is said to have been one of the most splendid instances on record of combined 
industry and oratory. He ranged over all Hastings' defence, and thus concluded. 

My lords, I have done ; the part of the Commons is concluded. 
"With a trembling solicitude we consign this product of our long, 
long labors to your charge. Take it ; take it. It is a sacred trust. 
Never before was a cause of such magnitude submitted to any human 
tribunal. My lords, your house yet stands ; it stands as a great 
edifice ; but let me say that it stands in the midst of ruins — in the 
midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earth- 
quake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours (the 
French Revolution). My lords, it has pleased Providence to place 
us in such a state, that we appear every moment to be upon the 
verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing 
only, which defies all mutations — that which existed before the 
world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself — I mean 
justice ; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place 
in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard 
to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after 
this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the 
great Judge, when he comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well- 
spent life. My lords, if you must fall, may you so fall ; but if you 
stand — and stand I trust you will, together with the fortune of this 
ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this 
great and illustrious kingdom — may you stand as unimpeached in 
honor as in power ; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, 
but as an ornament of virtue, a security for virtue ; may you stand 
long, and long stand the terror of tyrants ; may you stand the 
refuge of afflicted nations ; may you stand a sacred temple for the 
perpetual residence of an inviolable justice. 



LETTERS 



,-3 
His Grace the Most Rev. Dr, 'McHale, 



ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM. 



[789] 



To THE Most Rev, Dr, MannerS; 

Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, and PRniAXE of all England. 



The Question of the Divorce between George IV. and his 
Queen. 

Matnooth College, Dec. 2, 1820. 

Fcecunda culpce serula, nnptias 
Primum inquinavere, et genus, et domus, 
Soc fonts derivata clades 
In patriam populumque fliixit. — Horace. 

Fruitful of crimes, tliis age first stained 

Their liapless ofl'spring, and profaned 

Tlie nuptial bed ; from whence the woes, 

Which various and unnumbered rose; 

From this polluted fountain head 

0"er Rome, and o'er the nation spread. — Francis. 

^f*^Y LOED — During the late portentous proceedings which 
have awed public curio.sity, j'our Grace and episcopal col- 



|3|^°f leagues stood out in too prominent an attitude, not to 
attract and fix observation. As the question of divorce 
embraced much of ecclesiastical polity, it was naturally expected 
that the faithful would be enlightened by the Avisdom and confirmed 
by the accordance of the hierarchy. But, alas ! these anticipations 
ihave been sadly frustrated, and the surprise and disedification that 
were fccblj' murmured among the Lords have been long since loudly 
re-echoed through the empire.* It has been a subject of regret to 
some, of triumph to others, and of wonder to all, to see the heads 
of a religion which hinges on the principle of the universal intel- 

* Witness among others the speech of my Lord King, who sported a good deal of 
mirth and raillery at the expense of the premier, until his seriousness was restored 
by the shock which his faith had sustained in the collision of the prelacy. 

<791) 



792 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

ligibility of the Scripture, arrayed in adverse ranks on a momentous 
question, involving in its general tendency the best interests of man- 
kind, and in this particular instance, the safety and the honor of the 
empire ; disputing every inch of ground with Scripture authority, 
and thereby demonstrating to the world the obscurity of the sacred 
volume. For I will not — I cannot, my lord, suppose that any un- 
worthjr bias or flexibility to power could warp the judgment of men 
of such exalted station and sanctity. And hence, one cannot suffi- 
ciently express his indignation against those rash advocates of the 
Bible, who cannot defend its perspicuity without impeaching the 
integrity of its expounders. Hitlicrto, whatever might be the 
opinion of the prelates, thoy uniformly affected the language of 
orthodox^' and concord, and like the ancient philosophers, though 
they might inwardly disbelieve, they exteriorly reverenced the doc- 
trines of the Church. But on this occasion they scandalized the 
faithful, and edified the sectary, by sincerely revealing the mys- 
teries of their own disunion. 

I have heard, my lord, of the distinction of essentials, by which 
the lovers of subtletj', more than of truth, have thought to elude 
the arguments of their adversaries. It will not, doubtless, be re- 
curred to on this occasion, nor will it be deemed presumption to 
assert, that there is nothing essential in Scripture, if the doctrine 
of marriage does not form an essential point of Christian morality. 
It is not a speculative article, on which one could be supposed to 
err without danger, and propagate his eiTors, without affecting the 
public repose. It is a duty of every day's occurrence, connected 
with the happiness of almost every individual ; nor have the min- 
isters of the establishment themselves aspired to such unearthly 
sanctity, as to be exempt from its obligations. It is, therefore, of 
vast importance to know whether the marriage contract lasts for 
life, or only during the discretion of the parties ; and whether we 
are to believe, with his lordship of Clicster, that its ties are indis- 
soluble, or, with your Grace of Canterbury, that adultery annuls its 
engagements. 

On reading the report of j'our Grace's speech, I Avas not a little 
surprised to find a minister of Christ principally resting on the 
obsolete laws of Moses. However, it may appear consistent 
enough, that they who have a1)jured the living authority of the 



RLV. DR. McIlALE. 793 

Church should appeal to the falleu power of the synagogue. Still, 
I would expect from your Grace, that connected and enlightened 
view of legislation which mounts to the origin, and catches the 
spirit of the law, flinging aside its exceptions, and not the heavy 
drudgery of a darkling critic, who fastens on a detached part, with- 
out comparing its effect with the symmetry of the whole. It is 
true, as appears from Deuteronomy,* that divorce was tolerated by 
the law of Moses. But did this permission originally enter into 
the views of the legislator ; or was it not rather extorted by the 
stubborness of a people, whom it was necessary to conciliate by 
indulgence to a compliance with the law? Hence the practice of 
divorce was not so frequent among the Jews as it is generally, but 
erroneously imagined. Hence it was uniformly marked as a licen- 
tious advantage which was taken of the letter against the spii'it of 
the law, and denounced by those who were raised up by the Al- 
mighty, to enforce its observance or punish its infraction. 1 might 
illustrate the truth of these assertions by a reference to the 
purest period of the Jewish history. However, I shall content 
myself with citing the following passage of Malachy, which marks 
the indignation of the Almighty' against this odious practice : — 
" And this again have you done ; j'ou have covered the altar of the 
Lord with tears, with weeping, and bellowing, so that I have no 
more a regard to sacrifice ; neither do I accept any atonement at 
your hands. Because the Lord hath been witness between thee 
and the wife of thy youth, whom thou hast despised; yet she was 
thy partner, and the wife of thy covenant." j- It is true, indeed, 
that towards the decline of the Hebrew republic the permission 
given by Moses had grown into a pernicious practice. But this 
relaxation may be traced to another cause. "When we consider that 
the dispersion of the Jews introduced to their acquaintance the pro- 
fane wisdom of the East ; and that hence they mingled moi-e freely 
with the nations, it will not be surprising if the purity of the law 
should have been adulterated by a mixture of exotic commentary. 
Then arose the celebrated schools of Ilillel and Samaiah, of whom 
the latter confined the privilege of divorce to adultery, while the 
former abused the flexibility of the text to an indefinite latitude of 
passion or caprice. The Sanhedrim was divided by the credit of 

* Chap. ssiv. t Malachy, ii, 13, 14. 



794 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

these doctors ; * aud we are told that uutil the time of our Re- 
deemer, the controversy still trembled between the alternations of 
either party. 

I have asserted that the liberty of divorce granted by Moses was 
rather the effect of necessity than the spontaneous dictate of his wis- 
dom. Such is the interpretation of Christ, who, while He explains 
the law of Moses, unfolds and propagates His own. And the Phar- 
isees coming to Him, asked Him, "Is it lawful for a man to put away 
his wife ? tempting Him. But He answering them, saith to them, 
What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted 
to write a bill of divorce and to put her away. And Jesus answer- 
ing, said to them. Because of the hardness of the heart he wrote you 
that precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made 
them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father 
and mother and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall be in one 
flesh. Therefore, now, they are not two but one flesh. What, 
therefore, God ha/Ii joined together let not man put asunder."^ I 
should now appeal to the candor of the unprejudiced, and ask what 
is the doctrine clearlj^ conveyed in this language. The Phai'isees 
ask Christ whether it is lawful for one to send away his wife. To 
obviate cavil and to defeat that hostile spirit which so often lurked 
under a pretended reverence for the law. He asks what did Moses 
command. Then, after showing that divorce was an imperfectiou 
which originated in temporary circumstances. He ascends to the 
origin and develops the primitive institution of matrimony, 
showing its indissoluble connexion from the creation of only one 
of either sex — a connexion, if we are to believe the apostle, f 
which shadowed His own mystic union with His Church ; and con- 
cludes by proposing this original compact, instead of the permission 
of Moses, as the positive standard of His own law. 

I should now ask if the solitary text of St. Matthew § be sufiicient 
to weaken the force of this reasoning? "But I say to you, that 
whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting the cause of fornica- 
tion, causeth her to commit adultery : And he that shall marry her 
that is put away committeth adultery." St. Luke|| agrees with St. 
Mark, and what determines the controversy, the apostle, IT expressly 

* Seidell Uxor Ebraica, Lib. Ill, ch. xviii, xx, xxii. t St. Mark, x. 

X Ephes. V. § St. Matt. v. || St. Luke, xvi. ^ Cor. vii. 



REV. DR. McHALE. 795 

lu the name of Christ, prohibits mai-riage even in case of separation. 
What canon of criticism, then, can warrant us to bend the evidence 
of three clear and consistent testimonies, mutually supporting and 
illustrating each other, to an interpretation of an ambiguous passage 
which is at war with the express principles of the legislator? But 
if there is an apparent ambiguity, the Catholic interpretation makes 
it accord with the tenor of the other evangelists. The Catholic 
Church authorizes divorce, or rather repudiation, in case of adultery 
— a practice evidently warranted by the first part of the text of St. 
Matthew. Yet she teaches the indissolubility of marriage, a doc- 
trine clearly deduced from the second part, compared with the other 
evangelists ; nor shall I exhaust the patience nor insult the under- 
standing of my reader by showing the violence that is offered to lan- 
guage in qualifying an absolute member of a sentence with a forced 
or fancied exception. 

However, as if to satisfy the scruples and appease the pruriency of 
the grammarian, we are told that after this discourse with the Phari- 
sees, Christ was again consulted on the same point by His disciples, 
to whom He was in the habit of clearly explaining what He denied 
to the treacherous curiosity of His enemies, or only darkly delivered 
in mystery and parable. To them He thus solemnly addresses him- 
self: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, com- 
mitteth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her 
husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."* 
Such, my lord, is the conclusion of Christ himself upon that im- 
portant occasion when He undertook to instruct the future teachers 
of His Church. And hence I am justified in expressing my surprise 
that the exception of an imperfect and abrogated law should be con- 
verted by a Christian prelate into the rule and practice of a perfect 
dispensation. 

And now, my lord, permit me to lay before you another proof 
of the truth of Catholic interpretation in the demoralizing effects of 
the contrary doctrine. How different the idea of marriage in the 
Catholic and Protestant religion. In the one we behold a contract 
exposed to all the waywardness of inclination and caprice ; and in the 
other a sacred connexion subsisting for life, exalted by religion, and 
instead of being at the mercy of the passions, subduing and chasten- 

* .St. Mark, x. 



796 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

inof their violence b}^ its salutary control. The facility of divorce 
weakens the mutual desire of pleasing; a neglect of reciprocal atten- 
tion soon creates indifference ; indifcrence may ripen into disgust 
and rankle into enmity until the inihappy couple see no hope of re- 
lease from a cruel bondage, except in mutual separation and the 
prospect of new nuptials. Behold, then, the consequence : a divorce 
must be effected ; adultery is a necessary step ; morality is sac- 
rificed, the nature of law is reversed, and the apprehension, or 
rather the hope of i^unishment, operates as an incentive to the com- 
mission of the crime. What an unnatural state of society ! in which, 
according to the strong language of Seneca,* people marry for the 
sake of divorce, and divorce for the sake of marriage. 

Witness the daily contracts, in which regular provision is made 
for these disgraceful contingencies. I shall not speak of the wound 
that is inflicted on national morals b}' the frequency of their recur- 
rence. For such is now the facility of communication, that the tide 
of immorality flows through a thousand channels, and soon pene- 
trates from the highest region into the remotest creeks of society. 
If we were to judge fi'om observation, we could not believe that we 
lived in a Christian country. In the days of schoolboy innocence, 
our belief and our delicacy are equally shocked at the pictures of the 
Roman satirist, f Soon, however, the experience of age subdues the 
virtuous scepticism of youth ; we see, in the licentiousness of the 
times, the most faithful comment on his writings, and are taught to 
absolve the heaviest strokes of his pencil from the chai'ge of exag- 
geration. We behold the same shameful vicissitudes of marriage 
and divorce which marked the degeneracy of Rome, and may con- 
firm our opinion of the baneful influence of the Pi'otestant doctrine, 
in the words of an eminent Protestant historian : "A specious theory 
is confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates 

* Exeunt matrimonii causa, nubuut divortii. Seneca de benef. L. 3. 

t As an instance of our retrocession to the good old times of Seneca and Juvenal, 
I might mention the fantastic plan of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who recom- 
mended a bill in rarliament, septennial in its operation, for the benefit of married 
persons. Your Grace will surely smile at the ludicrous licentiousness of the pro- 
ject. However, I have no doubt but it would be as acceptable to many individuals 
of the present day, as the law of Moses. See Spence's Anecdotes of Books and 
Men : London, 1820. 



REV. DR. McHALE. 797 

that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and 
virtue." 

What is then, my lord, the prolific source of these abuses? 

Unde hfec monstra taraeii vel quo de fonte requiris? * 

or what can stay the progress of immorality, while the doctrine of 
divorce is unsettled, and abandoned to the licentiousness of every 
interpreter? The Catholic doctrine on the indissolubility of mar- 
riage is the only remedy — a doctrine that is already incorporated 
with tbe common law of England. Startle not, my lord, at such a 
jjroposition. Some of the ministers of the Establishment have gone 
farther, and recommended a reconciliation with the Catholic Church. 
Alarmed at the defection that is daily thinning the ranks of the 
Establishment, they have seen no hopes of subordination except in 
such an alliance. Nay, the union of the Churches occupied much 
of the attention of your predecessor, Archbishop Wake, who, had 
he lived to witness the dreadful progress of sectarianism, would 
doubtless have pushed his overtures with greater zeal, and perhaps 
with greater success. You may dread that the archiepiscopal throne 
of Cautei'bury would be overshadowed by the amplitude of Saint 
Peter's, and gradually shorn of its splendors. No, my lord; it 
would borrow fresh lustre from such a junction. Such were here- 
tofore the fears of some aspiring prelates, whose ambition made 
them impatient of the supremacy of Rome. But scarcely did they 
try the fatal experiment of separation, when they found that the 
eft'ulgence of their thrones was only reflected. This train of thought 
naturally reminds me of Bishop Butler, another ornament of the 
Establishment. You know with what ingenuity he traced the anal- 
ogy between natural and revealed religion, and discovered I'esem- 
blances between physical and moral truth. However, had not his 
prejudices arrested his speculations, he might have discovered in the 
condition of his own Church another illustration of this striking 
analogy. Loosened from the centre of unity, her motions are 
capricious and irregular : unfed by any accession of light from the 
fountain, her original stock is constantly diminishing ; and like a 
distant star, still receding from the centre, she casts her lone and 

♦ Whence those grim monsters? from what source they spring? 



798 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

waning splendor, gradually deepening into that sort of twilight which 
teems with wayward phantoms more than utter obscurity, and which, 
though too feeble to light the way, is still sufficient to make the 
darkness visible.* 

HiEROPHILOS. 



* It is consoling to witness tlie effect of this triitli on the men of Oxford, who 
have courage enough to quit the regions of those spectral shadows which they 
encounter in their inquiries, and are again returning to enjoy the light or the 
Catholic Church. 



REV. DR. McUALE. 799 



To THE Most Rev, William Magee, D, D„ etc, 

Protestant Archbishop or Dublin. 



Maynooth College, 1823. 

A deceitful balance is an abomination before the Lord, and a just weight is his 
■will. — Proverbs. 

^^SpY LORD : Your Charge to your clergy has excited a becom- 
^^^« ing interest ; and if you were ambitious of celebrity, your 
^§SS^ labors are amply repaid, and your hopes are realized. My 

°T" former letter was a reply to your address, such as it was 
delivered or published. This will embrace your authorized edition, 
improved by the slow retouchings of time, and enriched by further 
illustrations. Though your Charge provoked the just resentment of 
those whose feelings were insulted, I still entertained hopes that 
your grace would explain what was liable to misconstruction, and 
soften what was offensive. You had it still in your power to retrace 
your steps with dignity ; and the forgiving generosity of your coun- 
try would have put the obnoxious passages to the account of hasty 
and inaccurate publication, or to the zeal of an ardent mind, hurried 
by its own strength beyond the boundaries of discretion. But no : 
the heaviness of the Charge is still aggravated by the severer harsh- 
ness of the commentary ; and deeming it weakness to recede, with 
the exception of a solitary word, you gloiy in being consistent. 
Had you been content with publishing the Charge, such as it was 
delivered, you would have been spared the second notice of "Hiero- 
philos." But since you have presented yourself to the public iu 
another form, we will now examine whether the hasty zeal of the 
preacher has been corrected and improved by the cautious laboi-s of 
the commentator. 

In delaying my reply to this stage of the controversy, I have obvi- 
ated the plea put forth by your Grace, of the necessity of " consulting 



800 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

for a name aud station that should be respected, by refusing to come 
into familiar association" with what you are pleased to call the 
"scurrilities of a degenerate press." On the style and temper of 
your Grace's production I shall make no remark ; but on a compari- 
son, the public will pronounce whether " Hierophilos " has not de- 
prived you of that convenient subterfuge, by which exalted church- 
men have often contrived to hide their weakness under the mask of 
their dignity. 

Your Grace's attempt to strip us of the ancient and envied name 
of Calliolic, and to share in its honors, are almost unworthy of seri- 
ous refutation. Never in so short a comjpass have I witnessed so 
much of that happy ingenuity which labors to reconcile contradic- 
tions. In one page you speak as a " sincere Protestant, and glory 
in giving utterance to those sentiments which a Protestant bishop 
should never compromise ; " and in the next, Avith wonderful ver- 
satility, you would fain transform yourself into a Catholic ! Thus 
your Grace becomes at once a Protestant and a Catholic — blending 
in your own person those attributes which were hitherto deemed 
irreconcilable. On one occasion, j'our style rises to a tone of indig- 
nation against those politicians who have of late years appropriated 
the name of Catholics to a certain class of his Majesty's subjects, and 
familiarized the public ear to its injurious misapplication. In your 
next address I would respectfully caution you to speak in more 
measured language of the religion of politicians, lest, irritated by 
such ingratitude, they might be disposed to prove how much you 
are indebted to their services for the establishment of your own. 

It is not to the courtesy of parliamentary language that we are 
beholden for the name and honors of Catholic : it is derived to us 
from a higher source, and rests on more permanent authority. It is 
a name that is inscribed on the Creed of the Apostles, and which 
attached Saint Augustine to the faith which we profess — a name 
which, in every age, marked the rights of primogeniture, distinguish- 
ing the lawful heirs from those who were excluded from the divine 
inheritance — a name which has survived the ravages of time, and 
has never been lost by the true believers, nor usurped by the 
sectaries. Those who were conscious of the invalidity of their 
claims, have often attempted to impose on the credulity of mankind 
by the assumption of the genuine appellation, and by affixing on 



REV. DR. McHALE. gQl 

the rightful heir.s some opprobriou,s epithet. Thus it was that we 
were branded in this country with names which were intended to 
obscure our title. They, however, last no longer than the force iu 
which they originate ; and as soon as the laws that imposed the 
obnoxious epithets are relaxed, the most bigoted acquiesce in the 
justice of our pretensions. To deny us, therefore, the title of 
Catholics, is to deny the just connection between the name and 
nature of things, and to resist the current of thought and language 
by which each one is unconsciously borne along, as soon as the pre- 
judice which resisted it subsides. 

Non aliter quam qui adverse vix flumine cymbam 
Remigiis subigiit : si brachia forte reraisit 
Atque ilium in prsceps prono rapit alveus amni.* 

You acknowledge that the Roman Catholics are a branch of the 
Catholic Church, but that their religion is so incrusted with rust, 
that Protestants are obliged to exclude them from their communion ! ! 
While we admire your scrupulous piety, we must feel grateful for 
the chanty of your concession. If the Roman Catholics ai-e only a 
branch, I should wish to learn where is the trunk. Not, surely, the 
Protestant Church, since it would be an unnatural metaphor to con- 
vert a recent and divided religion into the trunk, and to characterize 
the most ancient one that professes Christianity as one of the 
branches. Unable, however, to deny its antiquity, you associate 
it with rust to depreciate its value. It is, my Lord, an old religion ; 
nor shall it ever boast of any ornament to its simplicity, by courting 
any connection with the fashionable doctrines of modern times. The 
value of the genuine coin was sufficient to keep alive in every age 
the vigilance of those to whose care it was entrusted ; and if they 
were inclined to suffer it to rust, it has been kept polished by con- 
tinual agitation. Like other precious jewels, it is gathering richness 
from time ; and it will always preserve sufficient value to provoke 
the hostility of those who are excluded from its possession. Its 
antiquity then is its pi'otection ; and what would have rusted baser 
metals, has, in reality, only brightened its splendor. 

* So the boat's brawny crew the current stem, 
And slow advancing struggle with the stream ; 
But if they slack their hands or cease to strive, 
Then down the tlood with headlong haste they drive. 



802 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Do not attempt, tlion, to separate the Catholic Church and the 
Catholic religion ; they are really inseparable terms. If we are a 
branch of the former, we are in possession of the latter ; and if yon 
are excluded from the pale of the one, you are likewise shut out 
from the inheritance of the other. How precious is the title of Cath- 
olic, when it is sought even hy those who have abjured the Catholic 
faith ! How fondly do you cling to its relics, and with what com- 
placency do you repeat its venerable name ! But it is only the name ; 
and while you arc amused with the unsubstantial shadow of the Estab- 
lishment, you remind me of the Trojan chief, who solaced his oxii& 
by feasting his eyes with the image of which the reality was gone. 

Atque aninuim pictura pascit inaui.* 

Content, yourself, then, with the name and dignity of a Protest- 
ant bishop, nor associate with it a name which will only expose the 
absurdity of your pretentions. Do not attempt at the sann; time to 
be a Catholic and a Protestant bishop ; for they are two things so 
different in substance, as well as in name, that no chemistry can 
combine qualities so I'epulsive in their nature, nor logic associate 
terms of such different signification. Should you, however, persist 
in your pretensions to the name and prerogatives of Catholic, I 
would beg leave to remind you of the fate of the wit, who affected 
the dress and manners of the lord of the foi'est. But nature spoke 
through the disguise, and the ill grace with which he wore his new 
dignity quickly revealed the deceit to the ridicule of his companions, 
and earned for the cheat the just retribution of his imposture. The 
apologue was, doubtless, familiar to 3'our earlier years, and your 
memory will readily catch the recollection; nor shall " Hierophilos" 
descend to expound the moral. 

To support your arguments in favor of the right of Catholics, 
you quote the authorities of Cranmer and Cromwell. It is rially 
eurprising that Protestants can speak of Cranmer with respect, 
whose name and character, in mercy to their cause, they ought to 
consign to oblivion — a man whose pliant faith, ever obedient to his 
interests, successively jnelded to the most opposite impressions — 
who shamefully practised incontinence while he professed celibacy — 
who would sanction a system of morality that once excited the vir- 

* And with the shadowy portrait feasts his mind. 



REV. DR. McIIALE. 803 

tuous indignation of a Pagan audience, while bis heart alijurcd the 
vows his lips had uttered — and who, like the two-foced Janus, 
presented opposite characters to the Protestants and Catholics of his 
time. As for Cromwell, most willingly do I make him over to your 
Grace ; nor do I envy you all the support you can derive from the 
name of the licentious favorite of Henry, whose disgrace and death 
were attested by the joy of the whole nation as the just punishment 
of his crimes. 

I cannot dismiss this subject without adverting to the note iii 
which your Grace insinuates two heavy charges against the Catholic 
Church, by stating, that " that cannot be a true religion which pro- 
hibits the free use of the Scripture, and subjects the word of Godta 
the authority of man." I shall not stop my reader with any com- 
plaints against the usual artifices of polemical disingenuity. The- 
ignorance of others might be endured, and their misrepresentation, 
disregarded ; but the qualifications of a bishop should place hiiru 
equally above the influence of both. If I were not determined tc 
give a full refutation of every part of your Grace's Charge, I would 
refer you to the former letters of " Hierophilos," in which the cal- 
umnies against the Catholic Church regarding the use of the Scrip- 
tures, were refuted to the satisfaction, or, at least, to the silence, of 
one of the most strenuous and talented advocates of the Bible. 
But as you will doubtless feel more pleasure in being referred to 
your own than to any other productions, allow me to place before 
your eyes the following sentence, taken from your Grace's Charge : — 
" We, my brethren, are to keep clear of both extremes ; and holding 
the Scriptures as our great charter, whilst wo maintain the liberty 
with which Christ has made us free, we are to submit ourselves to 
the authority to which he has made us subject."* After this sen- 
tence what becomes of the free use of the Scripture, which yon 
hold essential to the true religion? If by the "free use" of the 
Scriptui'e you only mean a " (en^pered freedom " regulated by the 
authority of the Church in the use and interpretation of Scripture, 
then you adopt the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and we will hail 
your conversion. But if by "free use" you mean an uncontrolled 
license of regulating one's belief I)y the Scripture and his own 
caprices — and, mark, there is no other alternative — why, in the 

* Charge, page 22. 



804 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

name of consistency, inveigh against the sectaries for asserting that 
" liberty with which Christ has made them free ? " If the authority 
with Avhich you endeavor to recall the Dissenters, subjects not the 
word of God to the authorit}^ of man, Avhy has the more consistent 
authority of the Catholic Church a different effect? If the judge 
who expounds the law and corrects the abuse of its licentious appli- 
cation, can justly spurn the imputation of invading the authority 
of the legislature, why will the Church, not claiming more than the 
authority of a judge, be said to usurji the rights of the legislature 
of heaven? 

The truth is, my lord, you stand not in need of argument. The 
sentence I have just quoted, of which the want of sense breaks out 
through the clumsy artifice of a labored and perplexed construction, 
is the best evidence that you are conscious of your own embarrass- 
ment. Knowing that you could not maintain your station without 
the exercise of an authority, of whose inconsistency you arc con- 
vinced, you endeavor lo soften it by keeping up the language of the 
Keformation, like the crafty Augustus, who, whilst he exercised a 
silent despotism over the Eoman people, still affected the language 
of freedom, to amuse the prejudices of those who chei-ished the 
memory of the ancient coiumon wealth. 

You tell us that the Scriptures are the boasted charter of the faith 
of Protestants, until we are wearied with tiie repetition ; nor is the 
ludicrous spectacle of the shattered fragments of that faith which the 
sectaries hurl against each other, sufScient to cure their infatuation. 
We, too, appeal to the Scripture as the great charter of our faith, 
but we appeal to it with reverence. We grasp no detached pas- 
sages, which might appear more striking to our contracted view; 
but we reverence the whole as the dictates of divine inspiration; 
and lest we should err in adjusting the complex system of our duties 
by its standard, we listen with respectful docility to that guide, 
which after minutely surveying the whole, can best reconcile its 
apparent inconsistencies and construct a balanced system of morality 
by regulating the proper limits of our obligations and assigning to 
the different virtues their respective proportions. 

To conclude — and I entreat the attention of every thinking Pro- 
testant to the reflection, as it obviates that delusion which has taken 
strongest possession of their minds. The Scriptures were never 



KEV. DR. McilALE. 805 

intended to be made the instrument of every blasphemer, who would 
fain conceal his extrav.igance and impiety under the mask of respect 
for religion. The indecent levity with which the awful concerns of 
religion are often treated by polemics, and the flippancy with which 
they abuse the Scripture, would almost make one think that the 
Scriptures wei'e written for the vain and irreligious as a matter of 
idle disputation. But the Scriptures are too sacred for familiarity ; 
nor ought the mysteries of heaven be profanely agitated between 
the vain contentions of men. Placed in the sanctuary of the Catho- 
lic Church, the Scripture is the monument of God's covenant with 
his people ; it afibrds a pi'oof of his presence, and a pledge of 
bis protection. But when it is dragged out of that sanctuary by 
the impiety of the sectaries, and sacrilegiously carried out to battle, 
it becomes like the same ark of the covenant in the hands of the 
hypocritical sons of Heli : it provokes the vengeance of heaven — 
it becomes the signal of their shame — and the instrument of their 
discomfiture. * 

HiEROPHILOS. 

* And the ark of God was taken ; and the two sons of Heli, Ophni and Phinees, 
were slain. — I. Kinys, iv. 11. 



806 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Dr, McHale's Letter to Lord Bexley, 



Ballixa, November, 1828, 

^^^Y LORD — These are strange times ; nor is it the least strange 
of the features which characterize them to see with what 
recklessness of their dignity the peers of the realm are rush- 
ing into print, and becoming ambitious candidates of ridicule. 
Heretofore they seemed to have adopted the Persian maxim of in- 
vesting themselves with I'everence, by keeping aloof from the ranks 
of the people. If they wei"e not great men, the secret of their little- 
ness was only known to their ua to dechambre; nor did they rashly ex- 
hibit themselves abroad, if they did not possess those hardy qualities 
which are proof against public collisions. Eely on it, my lord, the 
people take delight in those exhibitions of aristocratic intellect, as 
it gives them an opportunity of measuring the relative distance be- 
tween it and their own. "The JNIorning Chronicle," which conveyed 
to me Loi'cl Bexley's letter, contained another of William Cobbett's on 
the opposite side, and surely no reader has failed to remark how the 
puny production of the peer shrinks before the sti'ong and simple 
energy of the man of the people. With the Duke of Newcastle and 
Lord Kenyon, your lordship fills up the triumvirate of literature. 
Lords Farnham, and Lorton, and Winchiisea, are doubtless panting 
for the honor of digesting in plates of brass, the laws of the Consti- 
tution. Lords W^icklow and Rodcn must contribute their share to 
the labor, nor shall they cease to associate to their body all the writ- 
ing- peeis of the land, until they complete the number of Decemvirs 
— a combination equally ominous to the liberties of the country. 

It is difficult to compress within appropriate limits the refutation 
of your address, since, with a lofty disi'egard of all the unities of 
time, and place, and persons, your lordship's excursive fancy ranged 
over every topic that could minister to the prejudices of the public 
mind. 



REV. DR. McHALE. 807 

The Catholic Association is the first object that provokes your rage. 
I am not surprised. It is too nn'ghtj an object to escape notice, and 
it is every day assuming a more imposing attitude, and larger dimen- 
sions. To annihilate or dissolve such a formidable body, is the 
problem by which the great council of the nation has been singulai'ly 
l^erplexcd. There are only two ways — force or conciliation. The 
first, has been already tried, as if to read a lecture of wisdom to the 
advocates of coercion. But scarce was it dissolved, when its sullen 
and mutinous elements again rushed to the same centre, and consti- 
tuted another association, which has exceeded the former, as well in 
the closer compactness of nil its 'parts, as in the more extensive 
•sphere of its attraction. Force can have no other eflect than that of 
binding the mombci's of the association more firmly together. It is 
only the warmth of legislative favor alone that can so dissolve them 
as to defy their future coalition. 

The college of Slaynooth next comes in for the honor of your 
enmity. The classification shows that jour mind is not utterly 
destitute of arrangement, us the Catholic clergy are strenuous advo- 
cates for the final pacification of the country. But what is the amount 
of the ofiending of the college? Why, ti'uly, that it continues to 
teach the unchangeable doctrines of the Catholic Church ! The great 
political sin of its professors consists in this, that a sense of gratitude 
for a sum of money, which is but a paltry pittance in the Govern- 
ment expenditure, has not so subdued their minds, as to make them 
traitors to the rights and religion of the Catholic people. In becom- 
ing members of the college of Maynooth, its students never cove- 
nanted to surrender the pure faith of their fathers. Indeed, your 
lordship does not mean to insinuate that the college grant should be 
Avithhcid on account of the report of the Commissioners of Education. 
Surely, we ought to thank you for such a sentiment ; nor are we 
sorry that Mr. Vansittart is no longer the dispenser of the public 
treasury. 

It is not from a compliment to the Catholic people, the Govern- 
ment has ever granted money for Catholic purposes. It is from 
policy — and it is to this policy we shall be indebted for the continu- 
ance of such grants, if not for their augmentation. It is not the 
-interest of Government to throw back the peasantry into the igno- 
rance from which they are rescued by the labors of the Catholic 



808 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

clergy. It is not the interest of Government to let those passions- 
loose npon society which are restrained by the control of the Catholic 
priesthood. It is wiser, as well as more economical to expend a few 
thousand pounds upon the men who are keeping the people quiet, 
than millions upon those who are striving to intlame them with a re- 
ligious and political frenzy. And, my lord, I assert without fear 
of contradiction, that the Maynooth grant does more in the moral 
improvement of Ireland, than the enormous mass of money which is 
swallowed up by the Army, the Church Establishment, and the 
countless Bible and Vice-Suppressing societies all together. 

But still the people of Englan(? are taxed to the amount of nine or 
ten thousand pounds a year, for the purpose of maintaining pi'ofes- 
sors to teach the Roman Catholics of Ireland, that in some cases a 
priest, in others a bishop, and in all the Pope, can release them from 
their sins, their vows, their oaths ! And then you add, or rather 
premise, such is the doctrine laid down in the class book of the 
college. But why, my lord, did 3'ou not condescend to inform the 
honest freeholders of Kent, under what circumstances, and with what 
qualifications, could such a power be legitimately exercised. No; 
it did not suit your purpose. It was enough if your lordship could 
frighten John Bull into a horror for popery, by an ugly phantom of 
your own creation. Could your lordship not lay before them the 
following sentence of the report* alluded to in your address, and 
which is extracted from a Catholic prayer-book, now before me, en- 
titled "True Piety"? — " It is a fundamental truth in our religion, 
that no power on earth can license men to lie, to forswear, or perjure 
themselves, to massacre their neighbors, or destroy their native 
country, in pretence of promoting the Catholic cause or religion. 
Furthermore, all pardons or dispensations granted or pretended to 
be granted, in order to any such ends or designs, could have no 
other validity or effect than to add sacrilege and blasphemy to the 
above-menticmed crimes." Here is an extract from a popular and 
an extensively-read prayer-book, compiled by one of the most ven- 
erable prelates of the Irish Church, and approved by the adoption of 
the rest ; and yet, instead of exibiting it to enlighten the ignorance, 
and conciliate the good will of the English people, you draw some- 
dark and imperfect outlines of your own, leaving the rest to be filled- 
* Page 228. 



REV. DR. McIIALE. §09' 

up by their furious prejudices. Why not put in juxtajjositiou our 
doctrine on oaths with that of Sanderson, a Protestant professor ia 
the Univer.sity at Oxford, and afterwards bishop of Lincoln ? No: 
the resembkiuce between both would disabuse the men of Kent of 
their eiTors, and make them conclude that they were imposed upon 
by the interested views of lords who labor to divide the people 
in order to profit by their dissensions. The Catholics of these 
times are still doomed to the same savage treatment which was in- 
flicted on the Catholics in the time of Tacitus. Now, through the 
calumnies of their enemies, as then through the fury of their perse- 
cutors, they must be clothed in the skins of wild beasts ; now, as well 
as then, must they be covered with pitch, not only to blacken them 
before the public, but to make them fit objects for the brand to be 
flung at, and now as well as then must they be exhibited with this 
hideous caricature, in order to be hunted down by the public 
execration. 

Of all the topics of reproach which are urged by Protestants 
against Catholics, none has surpri.sed me more than that regarding 
oaths and dispensations. Is it because numbers swear a religion to 
be damnable and idolatrous, of which they never studied an iota, we 
must give them credit for a mo.st sensitive reverence for <iaths? Be 
assured of it, my lord, that of those who intrepidly swear to the 
idolatry of the Catholic religion, there are some who Avoukl curse 
with -a similar oath the thirty-nine articles, if the orthodox loaves 
and fishes of the mosque of Mahomet were to reward the seasonable 
change in their religious convictions. You are not ignorant how 
little of religion animated the great actors in what is called the Re- 
formation. Your lordship is not ignorant with what dexterity they 
accommodated their fluctuating creeds to the incessant shiftings of 
the political fortunes of England ; and how the same persons were 
prepared with the same lips to bless as orthodox, or to stigmatize as 
heretical, the same identical opinions. While the Catholics of Ire- 
land have cheerfully submitted to the slow tortures of a political 
ordeal, on account of the reverence which they feel for an oath, no 
doubt some of the lookers on were as much surprised at the prodigy 
of their fortitude or their folly, as the Carthagenians, who secretly 
mocked the suflerings of Regulus. To sound, then, this mysterious 
subject to the bottom, the apprehension is not that the Catholics feel 



810 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

no reverence for an oath ; but the apjjrehension of the Briuiswickers, 
and the boroughmongers, and the monopolists of all classes, is lest 
the Catholics should lose that reverence, and thus share in the spoil 
from which they are excluded. There is, then, a sentiment which 
may be appropriately added to those which are already so loudly 
toasted amidst the Orange orgies, and which, no doubt, will be 
rapturously cheered by every loyal supporter of the Protestant 
constitution ! ! 

May all the Papists of Ireland continue to be as much the dupes 
to their reverence for an oath, as were their Popish ancestors ! 

But though such a sentiment might be echoed by the hypocrites 
who turn religion into an instrument of faction, it will not be 
relished by that sound portion of the Protestant community, who 
can view the most hard-hearted selfishness lurking under the guise 
of a regard for the constitution. The people of England are begin- 
ning to be sensible how often they have been imposed upon by such 
hollow pretensions. As liberty was often the stalking-horse of the 
little tyrants of Greece, religious liberty is become the stalking- 
horse of the aristocratic faction of Britain. But the eyes of the 
I^eople are almost opened to these delusions. They know how 
the unprincii:)led Somerset could erect palaces out of the ruins of 
churches, under pretence of abolisliing every vestige of idolatiy ; — 
they know how Henry kept a succession of concubines, while the 
people were persuaded that all this was done in order to protect the 
purity of the Levitical law against the abominations of the Scarlet 
Lady of Rome ; — they know how their ancestors were burdened 
"with poor rates, while the lords, who were frightening them with 
the terrors of Popery, were, at Ihe same time, pocketing the wealth 
of the monasteries. They know all this, nor will they suffer them- 
selves to be cajoled any longer by saintly lords, who would burthen 
them with fresh imposts, whi'st they amuse them with the shadow 
of a constitution, of which they reserve the benefits to them- 
selves. 

Another article of impeachment against the Catholics of Ireland 
is, tliat Dr. Crotty justified the Council of Constance in the execu- 
tion of John Huss, and that Dr. McHale M'rote a series of letters 
against the Protestant Establishment. I am at a loss to know why 
the Catholics of Ireland should sutler for such hiijh misdemeanors. 



KEV. DR. McHALE. 811 

But Dr. Crotty holds his place, though guilty, by his sanction of 
the sentence, of the murder of John Huss ; and Dr. McHale, in- 
stead of being removed from the College, as he deserved, for daring 
to attack the majesty of the Established Church, was rewarded with 
a bishopric. Why, really, those letters contained the very milk of 
human kindness, compared to the burning lava which has been since 
poured upon the devoted heads of the parsons and the Establish- 
ment. Instead, therefore, of censure, I ought to have been thanked 
for the charity of m}^ forbearance. But the great crime was, that 
the professor of theology ■vvjas attacking the Established Church 
behind the masked battery of "Ilierophiios." In vindication, he 
must say, that none of those masked assaults were half so serious 
as those which were avowed with his name ; and, again, that the 
signature of " Hici'ophilos " became like a German mask, which is 
worn b}^ known personages, in order to avoid the inconvenience of 
recognition. A Rev. Mr. Philpot, or the Quarterly Reviewer, pre- 
tends not to understand any distinction between a real and an as- 
sumed signature. Perhaps, I may furnish them with an appropriate 
illustration. The Fellows of Trinity College were forbidden to 
marry under the pain of expulsion. However, they interpreted 
Genesis like Luther, and defied the laws of the College. Were 
tliey removed? No; because no lady assumed the name of the 
Fellow to whom she was allied. It was a matter of notoriety that 
such a one was the Avife of such a Fellow ; but he eluded the 
requisition of the law, on account of her anonymous, or, rather, 
heteronymous, appellation. Until of late this serious and import- 
ant statute was constantly violated. With your lordship, I will 
ask, were these Fellows expelled? And, with your lordship, I 
shall answer — No. But one of them was raised to a bisliopric, 
to insult the faith and exasperate the feelings of millions, who are 
taxed to minister to the pride, and pomp, and luxury of men, who, 
under the blasphemed name of the God of peace are shaking the 
country by their political fanaticism. 

To conclude this letter, I admit with your lordship that the 
■question is — whether the Catholics are equally entitled with the 
Protestants to all the benefits of the constitution? On this one 
point, then, we come to close issue. For me, though nurtured in 
the schools of arbitrary and Popish doctrines, I have learned that 



812 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

no human authority has a right to coutrol the dictates of conscience, 
or to punish, by penal enactments, religious sentiments, which war 
not with our obligations to the state. These are the sentiments I 
have been taught, and these are the sentiments by which our fitness 
for civil offices ought to be estimated. We are not to bo judged 
by the criterion fixed by your lordship, namely, the doctrines that 
Avere considered hostile to the Government — doctrines that 
are considered hostile ! ! We must protest against this criterion, 
whilst it is left to every monopolizing peer to fix its fluctuating 
meaning. 

Your lordship, no doubt, would consider the Pope's purely spir- 
itual supremacy an hostile doctrine. The Duke of Newcastle would 
consider the belief of the real presence a most formidable tenet. 
The invocation of saints would make Lord Lorton consider that we 
were invoking legions fi-om heaven to dispossess him of his estates ; 
and, ill short, every principle of the Roman Catholics would be con- 
sidered dangerous, whilst it was known that the monopoly of the few 
was to be shared among the many. 

It is high time that the empyrics in politics should resign their 
trade, and that Ireland should be at length subjected to a process 
that will restore her to soundness and to strength. Without Eman- 
cipation, she will be feeble, and a burden to the empire. Not that 
Emancipation will heal all her evils — assuredly no. It is only the 
first step in the process of her regeneration. Other measures for 
her relief must I'ollow in due course, until some powerful minister, 
backed l)y the co-operation of the entire country, shall arise, and 
apply his Herculean strength to the pinging and re-forming of the 
Establishment. 

In the meantime, Emancipation must be obtained. It must be 
generously given, in order to be thankfully received. It is not to 
be encumbered with any conditions that may be considered as nets 
for the religion of the people. The people of England are jealous 
of their civil and religious liberty. The Catholics of Ireland are 
equally jealous of theirs. Your lordship talks of concordats, and 
introduces the difl'erent states of Europe. There is no necessity for 
such a remote reference. England wants strength; Ireland requires 
tranquillity. Let the negotiation be, therefore, carried on Avith & 
view to their mutual political advantages, without any insidious at- 



REV. DR. McHALE. 813 

tempts on the religion of either. The Catholic religion can be made 
a useful ally to the state ; but it is only when its profession is un- 
shackled, and its .ministers are beyond the reach of any sinister 
political control. 

I have the honor to be, your lordship's obedient servant. 

^ John, Bishop or Maronia. 



814 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



To THE Protestant Archbishop of Tuam. 



Ballina, February 10, 1830. 

^^^pY LORD — It ap[)ears from the public prints tliat your Grace 
i^l^^ has been lately exercising yoixv pastoral zeal, in writing^ 
^^^P to your clergy, to carry on a mission among the Roman 

'^' Catholics ; and if the copy of the circular be genuine, it 
is a production that evinces no ordinary spirit. It was fondly im- 
agiaed that a benevolent legislature had succeeded in stilling the 
angry spirit of controversy by which the land was so long shaken, 
and the appearance of the olive branch was hailed as a presage of 
mutual conciliation. But, whilst the Government brings peace, 
your Grace seems to imagine that the sword is a more befitting 
badge for the ministers of I'eligion ; and hence you seize once 
more your theological trumpet, to arouse the sentinels of Israel 
to vigilance and war. 

At any time the letter to which I allude would be considered the 
production of a mind under the most potent preternatural influences. 
At present, and with all the difficulties that stare the Establishment 
in the face, it exhibits the calmest indiflorence to all earthly consid- 
eration. There is no alloy of worldly prudence about your zeal ; no 
cold calculations of the dangers to which the Church is exposed can 
chill the ardor of j-our charity. No ; Avhilst the Establislimcnt is 
now deliberately weighed in the balance, and (he other prelates are 
watching tlie legislature with trembling anxiety for what may come 
to pass ; — whilst Lord JNIountcashel, with a warning voice, is turn- 
ing the public attention to the decayed state of the walls, and wisJies 
to exchange some vain and gilded decoiations for Doric pillars, to 
sustain the tottering edifice; — whilst Sir John Newport is giving 
notice that he will subinit this important subject to the wisdom of 
the assembled senate of the empire; — whilst the pressure of tithes 
and church-rates is the theme of every theorist, of whatever creed. 



REV. UR. McHALE. 815 

•who reasons on the national distress ; — whilst the Protestant Bishop 
of Ferns frankly owns that, -without the rich harvest of its tempor- 
alities, no minister of talent would think it wortli while to labor in 
the vine^'ard of the Lord ; — whilst, in short, all are under the con- 
viction that the public would be benefited by a mere general distri- 
bution of the wealth that is confined in the temple ; — whilst, thus, 
the temporalities of the Church are the only portion of it in which 
its friends as well as its foes confess they feel an interest, your 
Grace is happily free from any disquietude on this subject. No 
such sordid cares can reach the elevation on which your spiritual 
abstractions have fixed you. Your heart has no griefs but for the 
spiritual blindness of the poor Catholics ; and were the Establish 
meut to-morrow shorn of all temporal honors, your Grace would, 
no doubt, be overwhelmed with joy, could you but extend to the 
benighted Catholics its spiritual consolations ! 

But, my lord, perhaps I do 3'ou wrong in thus attributing to yoa 
an utter indifference to the world, which might only suit one of the 
anchorites of old, and to which the sober and sensible spirit of the. 
Protestant religion deems it no merit to aspire. Others of more 
rational and practical views will be disposed to correct the mistake 
into which I have fallen, and will probably perceive the deepest 
craft lurking under the simple guise of religious enthusiasm. Yes ; 
the Earl of Mountcashel has attracted universal attention to the gor- 
geous temporalities of the Church, as well as to the enormous dis- 
proportion by which they are applied. 

Hence your Grace's polemical missive, sent foiih at this season- 
able juncture as a decoy to divert the public from the substantial 
game that has been started, to follow in the pursuit of shadowy 
phantoms. Such artifices will, however, no longer do. Your brand 
has been flung too late ; the pile has been extinguished ere your 
torch has reached it ; and its materials, once so fiery and inflammatory, 
have lost their qualities of combustion. You may now send foilh 
your missionaries to set Catholics and Protestants against each other. 
The Catholics and Protestants are too much alive to their own inter- 
est to be the victims of such delusion. There was a time when every 
town had its missionary menageries — when some controversial 
curiosity was imported from afar, and carried round the kingdom to 
amuse the old women of either sex, who thronged together to feast 



SIQ TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

their ears with a foreign dialect and their eyes witli a strange appa- 
rition. There was a lime when the most ignorant mountebank w^ho 
raved against Popery could fix the public attention. But the spell 
that bound the hearers has been at length broken ; the film that fas- 
cinated their eyes has at length been rubbed oiF. Ko illusions of 
stage effect can blind men any longer to the fully and the mischief 
of such exhibitions, and so completely palled is the people's taste 
by their repetition that if a public advertisement were to announce 
that your Grace himself, at the head of your missionaries, were to 
ap2oear striding in stately pomp to the theological theatre, I ques- 
tion whether you could command a sufficient audience to laugh at 
the solemn mockery. 

Making full allowance for the readiness with which your clergy are 
disposed to obey your Grace's orders, I doubt not but they would 
prefer staying at home to take care of their tithes and their wives 
and children rather than risk all the odium of a controversial cru- 
sade. They know it is sufficiently burdensome to Catholics to pay 
them the tenth portion of the fruits of their industry ; nor should 
they like to aggravate the burden by additional reproaches on their 
religion. Let them, however, go forth ; and in putting the two 
religions in juxtaposition, let them not fail in addressing the Catholics 
— who are often without a church to shelter thorn — to exhibit the 
blessings of the Law Church, which piousl}' transferred to the wives 
and daughters of its ministers that wealth which the old Church of 
Christ had superstitiously expended in the repair and erection of 
churches, as well as the relief of the poor. Let them go to some 
of the parishes of your Grace's diocese, in which snug churches have 
been raised at the expense of an exclusively Catholic population, 
and let them pei'suade that population of the advantage of a pci-petual 
church cess entailed on them for the purpose of providing salaries 
for a clerk and sexton — perhaps the only relics of the ortliodox 
faith iti the whole parish, and who are still deemed so valuable as to 
require a golden anchorage to keep them from being drifted away 
to Popery. Let them, on meeting large flocks kneeling before the 
divine mysteries, with their ample foreheads bared to all the rain 
and winds of heaven, invite them to fill their own little conventicles, 
■where, in spite of the threatened woesof Ezekiel,* their elbows may 
♦Ezekiel, xiii, 18. 



nSV. DR. McHALE. , §17 

repose oii cushions and their devotions may be warmed by the com- 
fortable efi'usions of a stove. But, my lord, the parsons will not 
thus expose themselves to the bitter irony of a people perhaps more 
famed than any other for an exhaustless strain of sarcastic intelli- 
gence ; they will not, for their own sakes, be marked exceptions to 
the good sense that is pervading all classes of society. There is now 
no further controversy about the purity of the Protestant Chiu-ch ; it 
is all turning on the permanence of its temporalities. All are now 
agreed that the Establishment is a political machine originally framed 
by political artificers, since kept together for political motives, and 
which, like every other machine, as soon as the expense of keeping 
it in repair shall overbalance its benefits, must be abandoned to a 
quiet and natural decay. 

On this topic there is no room for further disputation, now that a 
controversy altogether of a different kind lias started up in tbe coun- 
try ; which is the most cfiectual method of promoting the prosperity 
of Ireland, and of uniting more closely all classes of the long-dis- 
tracted people. Who sh;dl be foremost in exploring its resources? 
in giving vigor to its trade? in opening new avenues of industry, 
and consigning to merited contempt all the leaden lore of malignant 
bigotry by which the minds of the people were so long poisoned? 
Yes ; the apostles of discord must at length retire. There is now a 
livalry of benevolence — an emulation in laboring for the public good 
— a contention for advancing a nation's happiness, which :dl the arts 
of narrow-minded individuals will not be able to suspend. There is, 
in short, a great anxiety to bury, by recent acts of kindness, the 
memory of ancient strife ; and a flow of mutual good feeling, silently 
working through the country, which all the odium llieologicum 
poured forth from your Grace's episcopal vial shall not be able to 
embitter. 

I am your Grace's obedient servant, 

^JoHN, Bishop op Maeonia. 



818 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Christmas Day at the Vatican. 



Feast of St. STEPaEX, Rome, 1831. 

^^^NWILLING to interrupt the series of observations suggestecJ 
s^^ by the contcmphition of the seven hills of the ancient city, I 
/^p have not as yet made any reference to the Vatican. Yet no 
it part of Rome possesses stronger claims on the affections of 
the Christian. It was not one of the seven hills on which the city 
was seated, yet it is the object which generally challenges the first 
visit from the piety of the pilgrim or the curiosity of the mere trav- 
eller. I was scarcely an hour arrived, when I hastened to Saint 
Peter's, to offer up my cold and imperfect prayers in unison with the 
incense of prayer and sacrifice that is daily ascending from that 
magnificent and holy temple, to the throne of the Almighty. Its 
precincts were worthy of the majesty of the temple. The obelisk in 
front proclaimed the homage of the conquered arts and wealth of 
Paganism to the spirit of Catholicity ; its refreshing fountains, con- 
tinually playing in the sunbeams, were an emblem of its pure and 
perennial doctrine flowing from the shrine of the apostles ; and its 
curved colonnades, stretching out on either side, most significantly 
represented the ardent and affectionate eagerness with which the 
Catholic Church greets her children and cherishes them in her bosom. 
No sooner did I cross the threshold of the church than I felt, what 
others are said to feel, the illusion of its folded perspective. As I 
advanced, it appeared to be gradually unrolled, adjusting the har- 
monious position and size of the surrounding objects, until I stood 
under the stupendous dome, of which I had just seen the original 
model in the Pantheon : the one reposing on the earth, the master- 
piece of Pagan temples, and the other resting on lofty pillars, pene- 
trating to the heavens — the ■wondrous trophy of the Christian artist 
by whose skill and energy it was raised. 



REV. DR. McHALE. 819 

Though the capital is rich in works of art, ancient and modern, 
it is distanced in competition by the splendor of the Vatican. To 
the chui'ch of St. Peter was it first indebted for the varied aggregate 
of unrivalled treasures which have been gradually gathered round it. 
The residence of the Popes, transferi'cd from the palace of Lateran, 
led to the erection of its palaces, its galleries, and magnificent 
saloons, in which were deposited the relics of ancient art, disinterred 
by the zeal of antiquarians, encouraged and animated by the munifi- 
cent patronage of its Pontiffs. Poets and sculptor's studied with 
assiduity those elegant models, and labored to rival their excellence 
by similar creations of their own. The relation that Rome holds to 
the world, collecting within its precincts more of historical and 
classical monuments than are spread over the earth, the Vatican 
museum may be said to hold to Rome, condensing within its sanctu- 
aries such a rare variety of exquisite treasures as might be said tO' 
rival, if not in number, at least in value, all the other collections of 
this city. Without neglecting them, it is no wonder if my visits to 
the Vatican were more frequent than to any of the other churches or 
palaces of Rome ; nor is it until after repeated visits that you can 
find a clue through the labyrinths of their apartments, and become 
familiar with those mastei'pieces, which must be frequently seen in 
order to be duly valued. 

When travei'sing the saloon of the relics of ancient monuments, 
with its cinerary urns and antiquated inscriptions, such as might give 
occupation for years to a Mabillon or a Muratori, you fancy you are 
walking through some ancient necropolis ; and I felt — to avail m}^- 
selfof an anticipated incident — as I afterwards felt when walking 
over the subterraneous city of Pompeii, that, of names once re- 
nowned, and of achievements that conferred cotemporary fame, not 
a memorial now remained but a misshapen fragment of marble, of 
which the orthography might puzzle the most practised decipherer 
of the eai-lier forms of the characters of Tuscany or Rome. Yet 
even those fragments have their value. It was partly by their aid 
(because a stone recorded every event) that such light has been 
thrown over the early history of the city,- and I have often lamented, 
that in Ireland, where it may be now done with safety, more atten- 
tion is not paid to the recording of national events, in the more dur- 
able materials of monuments of stone. From the excavations that 



820 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

arc occasionally carried on in the city and neighborhood, those mon- 
uments are multiplying fast, and, notwithstanding the vast apart- 
ments of the Vatican, arc requiring more extensive and appropriate 
accommodation. 

To the four successive Popes, bearing the names of Clement and 
Pius, the Vatican is justly indebted for its extension, and their 
names are in a special manner associated with its magnificent mu- 
seum. Accordingly, the saloons bearing their names, and appropri- 
ated to the representation of the chief events of their reigns, stretch 
out (such is the fate of all history), and occupy a larger space as 
you come down. Still, whether the apartments be small or spacious, 
these objects, whether of painting or of sculpture, will always 
attract particular attention, which have already secured the suffrages 
of mankind. Such, amidst the monuments of ancient sculpture, are 
the Nile with its attendant Nereids; the Laocoon, writhing in inex- 
pressible agon}' amidst the coiling and venomous embraces of tiie 
serpent; and, in fine, the Apollo, that may be admired Ijut cannot 
be rivalled, combining all the energy of the one sex with the graces 
of the other, and appropriately fixed in one of the farthest niches of 
the museum, as an object for attracting fresh admiration. Such, 
among the paintings, are the immortal frescoes of Raphael, still dis- 
playing the chief events of the inspired history on the ceilings of the 
galleries of the Vatican. Such the other chambers, appropriated by 
Julius II. exclusively to his pencil, and known by his name. Such, 
too, his fiinciful arabesques, borrowed from the baths of Titus, with 
■which the walls of the galleries are decorated; and such, in fiue, 
the awful picture, or rather group of pictures, of Michael Angelo, in 
the Sixtine Chapel, portraying — a boldness from which a less dar- 
ing spirit would have shrunk — the terril)le scene of the last judg- 
ment, of the reality of which an idea may be formed, when its empty 
and shadowy representation cannot be contemplated without awe. 

No doubt the peculiar circumstances of time and solenmity under 
•which this singular picture is contemplated, impart to it an additional 
effect. The chapel opens on the first Sunday of Advent — the day 
peculiarly consecrated to the commemoration of the Last Judgment. 
.During the four Sundays of that penitential season, solemn mass is 
celebrated within the walls of the chapel, on which this awful scene 
is delineated, and at which the Pope attends, together with the car- 



REV. DR. McHALE. 82X 

dinalii, robed in their penitential attire. Without indulging in the 
language of cxaggei-ation, it is an assembly such as seldom can be 
witnessed. You have a meeting composed of men eminent for piety, 
or science, or age, or long and arduous habits of business, and often 
conspicuous for a combination of all these qualities ; and if the 
ancient Gaul was tempted to stroke the beard of one of the Roman 
senators, to try whether the god-like assembly was composed of 
mortals, none need fear the imputation of that awe which ignorance 
or bail)arism inspires, in pronouncing the senate of the Roman car- 
dinals the most venerable and majestic assembly in the world. 

The magnificent ceremonies of Christmas day formed an appropri- 
ate close for the preceding functions of Advent. At an early hour 
in the morning I went to St. Peter's, and had the great consolation 
of celebrating three Masses in the subterranean chapel over the tomb 
of tlie Apostles. Afterwards I attended at the solemn iMass sung 
by his Holiness. At nine o'clock the cardinals, with their appropri- 
ate ti'ains, together with the bishops, prelates, and clergy, were to 
be seen crossing the nave from the sacristy to a chapel on the right 
hand, near the great entrance-door from which the procession coni- 
menced. At this time the scene became animated by the crowds 
that were thronging to be present at the august sacrifice ; the bustle, 
however, was hushed on their entrance, for, though some on moving 
up the nave seemed in the attitude of conversation, not a whisper 
was heard in the distance, and their little figures seemed to disap- 
pear, as thoy spread in various directions, to t)rocure the most con- 
venient view of the ceremonies. Still the city continued to [lour in 
its fresh multitudes, yet the crowds were comparatively unnoticed 
in its vastness. 

The nave was lined by two files of Swiss guards, whose singular 
equipment in arms and costume contributed to iieighten the cft'cct of 
the solemn scene. Behind the high altar a magnificent screen was 
erected, covering the tribune of the church,' and leaving the inter- 
mediate space for the performance of the ceremonies. Against tliis 
screen, which was tastcfcdly hung with richly embroidered scai'let, a 
platform was raised, ascended by seven steps, with a m.ignificcnt 
pontifical throne, elevated in the centre. Benches for the cardinals, 
bishops, and other ecclesiastics were tastefully fitted up on either 
side, and temporary galleries erected, for the accommodation of 



g22 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

many of the inimense congregation. After nine o'clock the proces- 
sion began to move ; first the different ecclesiastics in their respect- 
ive robes, next the bishops, and then the cardinals, sweeping, in a 
lengthened and varied train, over the church, while the Roman Pon- 
tiff, seated on his throne, and borne aloft by the nobles of the city, 
formed a suitable close to the gorgeous spectacle. The liturgy was 
then sung with all the power and harmonious variety of intonation 
for which the Pope's choir is justly celebrated. The epistle and 
gospel were sung in the Greek and Latin tongues. The impressive 
solemnity with which the divine mysteries were celebrated tixcd the 
attention ; but when the sudden clangor of trumpets, mingling with 
the explosion of cannons from St. Angelo's, announced the elevation, 
the effect was truly electric, and there was not a heart, that was not 
a rebel to its own feelings, that was not prostrate in gratitude to 
adore that God, who then, as in Bethlehem, came under a myste- 
rious form — a sacrifice of peace and of propitiation. Christmas day 
has everywhere its peculiar claims to devotion. There are, from the 
humble huts in Ireland, as pure and precious orisons offered to the 
Almighty, as fi'om any temple on the globe. There ai-e hearts in 
■which God kindles the sacrifice of his love, without any remote or 
intermediate incentives. There is, however, no other place Avhich 
furnishes so much of fuel to enkindle the flames of devotion, as this 
temple. The august sacrifice of Melchisedeck ofiered on the anni- 
versary of our Redeemer's birth, by one who exemplifies not only 
tlie rite but the person of the royal patriaix'h, in the circumstance of 
being at once a king and pontiff in a city which is the cemetery of 
ancient Paganism, and the centre of the Christian world ; on the 
spot beneath which, with the kindred ashes of St. Paul, repose those 
of the Prince of the Apostles, whose spirit still animates and sus- 
tains his successors, realizing the promises of the divine Founder of 
the Church, whilst they survive the shifting dynasties of the world — 
perpetuating the oblation of the sacrifice of love, and that under a 
dome whose lofty roof draws up the soul to heaven — these wei-e 
circumstances calculated to awaken feelings which cannot be forgot- 
ten ; whilst the vastness of the edifice reminds you that it cannot be 
the temple of any one country that you arc treading ; but as you 
walk along, with the sanctuary still receding from before you, and 
view the tribunals of mercy, with their inscriptions in various Ian- 



REV. DR. McHALE. 823 

guages, inviting Greek and Hebrew, you are struck with the hidden 
and mysterious immensity of the place — an emblem of Him to whom 
it is dedicated — and forced silently to exclaim that this is no " other 
but the house of God," into which "the nations should bo continually 
flowing from the four winds of heaven." 

>h John, Bishop of Maeonia. 



824 TREASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 



Letter from Rome. 

Mr Visit to the Pope. — A Manuscript Letter of Mart Queeh 
OF Scots. — The Tombs of O'A'^eil .\nd O'Donnell, etc. 



Rome, March 27, 1832. 

||i^^HE first of my visits to manifest the homage of my dtitiful rever- 
^S^ eiice to the Holy Father, was a few 6iiys after my arrival. 
^|j It was to a Cathiilie bishop from Ireland a visit fraught with 
i consolation. Ndtwithstaiiding all the efl'orts, which an impi- 
ous policy had recourse to, to sever our connexion with the chair of 
Peter, etlbrts far more ingenious in their cruelty than those of the 
earlier persecutions that hunted the Christians into the catacombs, it 
was a gladsome introduction to be presented to tlie good Father of 
the Faithful, and to receive at his feet the Apostolical benediction. 
He is worthy of the elevation to which he has been raised. Eenevo- 
lence ! — it is too weak a word; — affectionate charily beams in 
every feature of the good Pontiff, nor is tiicre wanting that visible 
indication of a stern and unbending intrepidity* of character, which 
will not fail, whenever it may be necessary, to vindicate the dearest 
interests of religion. 

The interval between Christmas and Easter was occupied in visit- 
ing the most conspicuous churches, galleries, colleges, and libraries 
of Rome, together with occasional excursions to the remarkable 
places in the vicinity, which history and fable have so much asso- 
ciated with the early fortunes of Rome. On the feast of the 
Epiphany, it was a rare and interesting spectacle to see priests 
from the different Eastern Churches, Armenians, Greeks, and Mar- 
onites, celebrating mass in their own peculiar rites, and in their owa 

* His fortitude in supporting tlie illustrious Arclibishop of Cologne against the- 
persecuting policy of the King of Prussia, as well as his Apostolical rebuke of the- 
atrocious tyranny of the Russian autocrat, justify this view of his character 



REV. DR. McHALE. §25 

respective tongues. The Sunday within its octave witnessed one of 
the most gratifying exhibitions which any country could exhibit, the 
young students, to tlie number of about iifly, delivering compositions 
before the assembled dignitaries of Rome, in the varied languages 
of their respective countries. It was a scene wiiich bore attestation 
to the Catholics of the faith of Rome, as well as to the union which 
links its most distant members, to see a number of young men, 
brought up in adverse national prejudices, and speaking from their 
infancy different languages, now assembled together, and moulded 
into one intellectual mass, animated by one spirit, and like their 
predecessors of old, in the day of Pentecost, all understanding 
through their different dialects the voice and faith of Peter, conveyed 
in one single language, is a continuance of the gift of tongues still 
perpetuated in tiie Church, and which cannot fail to make its im- 
pression on a reflecting and religious mind. In the evening, a large 
and selected society of some of the most distinguislied strangers in 
Rome, as well as the natives, enjoyed the elegant and princely hos- 
pitality of the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda. On that occa- 
sion, Monseignore Mezophanti* addressed a large number of the 
guests in their respective European or oriental dialects, with ease, if 
not with elegance. His acquirements as a linguist are rare and 
extraordinary ; Crassus and others acquired great celebrity for their 
ready talent in conversing with strangers in their own language : it 
is not, I am sure, any exaggerated praise to assert, that in variety of 
languages, or readiness in speaking them, they could not have 
reached the excellence of Mezophanti. 

Among the numerous and richly assorted libraries with which Rome 
abounds, the Vatican is far the first in the number and variety of 
its volumes. It may be, therefore, easily inferred, that far beyond 
competition, it is the first in the world. Its majestic entrance is 
worthy of such a library, as well as of tlio celebrated Pope, Sixtus 
Quintus, who contributed so nuich to its literary treasures, as well 
as to the embellishment of its architecture. A magnificent picture, 
seen as ,you enter, exhibits Fontana, the architect, unfolding his plan 
to the Pontiff: then you behold on one side, a series of the most 
celebrated libraries in the world, and on the other, a succession of 
the General Councils, by which the faith of the Catholic Church was- 
* He has been since, and deservedly, honored with the purple. 



^6 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

illustrated. The library has been generally entrusted to men of vast 
erudition, who Mere a])le to profit of its treasures, and again to 
return them with interest, cnrichiug them with valuable productions 
of their own. Such was Assemani whose oriental researches con- 
ferred additional celebrity on the library of the Vatican. And such 
is the Monseignore Mai,* the present librarian, distinguished for his 
valuable literary labors in restoring manuscripts, which were thought 
to have been lost. His courtesy and kindness in affording the 
easiest access to this treasury of science and of literature, 1 feel 
much pleasure in acknowledging, for it earned a claim to my 
gratitude. 

But, indeed, courtesy has been the characteristic quality of all the 
librarians in Eome, in affording to visitors every facility of study 
and research. Such I experienced at the great libraries of Ai'a 
Cceli, and the Minerva, and such too at St. Isidore's, and the Bar- 
berini library, in which documents and manuscripts connected with 
Irish history abound. To that at St. Isidore, my visits were fre- 
quent, as I found there a number of Irish manuscripts. Besides, I 
loved to contemplate the portraits of celebrated Irishmen which 
decorate its walls, especially those of two of the most illtistrious men 
of their age aud nation — Luke Wadding, ihe learned author of the 
Annals of the Franciscans, and Florence O'Mul Corny, Archbishop 
of Tuam, to whose zeal and labors Ave are indebted for the founda- 
tion of Louvain, and the education of many eminent men, who con- 
ferred honor on their country. When one thinks of the dark and 
diiScult times in which those men lived, and the mighty things they 
achieved for their country and their religion, he feels confirmed still 
more in his holy faith, since they must have been endued with more 
than human fortitude, in achieving such great enterprises. I met 
but one solitary exception to this general disposition to accommo- 
date, in the keepers of the literary establishments in the Eternal 
City. This exception was in the archives of the Vatican, — a 
department quite distinct from its library. It is an immense collec- 
tion of documentary papers and instruments, bulls, letters, and 
rescripts from the earlier ages to the present time. I was anxious 
to look for some documents that would throw some light upon our 

* He, too, has been, as a reward of his' merits, associated to the College of Car- 
dinals. 



REV. DR. McHALE. 827 

ecclesiastical history, and enable me to fill up some chasms in the suc- 
cession of our Ijishops during the persecutions. To my great sur- 
prise, delay succeeded to delay, in such manner as to make it evident 
that the keeper wished to deny me all access to the records which 
I sought. On animadverting on conduct which appeared to me so 
unaccountable, I found that the reverend gentleman was a pensioner 
of the British government, employed to send them such extracts of 
State papei's, as would elucidate the public transactions connected 
with the history of England. Hei-e, in this solitary instance, I 
found tlie perverse influence of British money, and drew my conclu- 
sion on tlie misfortune that would come over Ireland, if ever the gov- 
erimient should succeed in pensioning the Catholic hierarchy. This 
man's sympathies, duties, feelings, seemed to be all absorbed by his 
gratitude for British money. To our oppressors, as far as he was 
concerned, the archives were open ; to the Catholic victims of their 
persecution alone, they were inaccessible. However, a gentle hint 
that I would look for redress from the pontifical government, nay, 
that his conduct should be reported to the House of Commons, who 
might take this reverend pensioner to task, wrought in him a kinder 
tone of feeling, and procured for me a sullen and reluctant admit- 
tance. Amidst the huge mass of documents, I could not succeed in 
th*e object of my search. However, I lighted on many rare and curi- 
ous letters, that well recompensed me for my loss. Among others I 
■was shown one of Mary Queen of Scots, written to the Pope in her 
own hand, on the day preceding her execution. It was a precious 
relic, which had the appearance of being discolored by tears. It is 
no wonder ; such a letter could not be written or read without deep 
emotion. It led to a long train of thought on the chequered life and 
tragic death of. a woman, of whom her age was not worthy. Nay, 
the bitter prejudices of her time, seem to have descended to pos- 
terity. There Mas no chivalry, then, in justice, to guard her life, 
nor chivalry in history to vindicate her fame. But time will avenge 
her wrongs, and I could cheerfully encounter more of the suUenness 
of the pensioned INIarini, to have the gratification of reading such an 
autograph belonging to this illustrious and ill-used Queen, whose 
misfortunes created a sympathy, which the misdeeds of the perfidi- 
ous monarchs of her race were not able to obliterate. 

Not far from the Vatican, on the Janiculum, the southern brow of 



828 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the same hill is a monument, which will fail not to tell the Irish 
travellers, of what their ancestors suffered from the offs[)ring of 
Mary Stuart. The small church of St. Peter, designed by Bram- 
ante, and which reminds you of the temple of Vesta, on the hanks 
of the Tiber, or of the Arno, at Tivoli, contains this melancholy 
monument. A slal) of marljle in the middle of the floor, with the 
names of O'Neil and O'Donnell, recalls to memory the flight of those 
no!>le chieftains on a pretended conspiracy, set on foot to enable the 
ungrateful James to partition among a horde of English and Scottish 
Calvinists, their hereditary domains, together with six counties of 
the I'rovince of Ulster. Few, whatever may be their opinions or 
feelings on the justice of those ancient quarrels, or the policy that 
dictated such cruel confiscations, could refuse a sigh or a tear to the 
memory of the gallant Tyrone, the hero of Bealanathl)uide, who had 
sustained so long and so bravely the sinking fortunes of his country 
against the combined ainiies of Elizabeth. It was difiicult to resist 
the rush of feeling which was called forth by the contemplation of 
the close of his career, as well as by the ingratitude of his own 
degenerate countrymen. Here, bowed down by misfortune, and 
blind through age and iiiSrmity, this gallant warrior closed his life 
like another Bclisarius, outlawed and attainted even by the suffrages 
of those Catholics, whom he saved from utter ruin, without their 
interposing one solitary vote for his protection. It is well that 
Christendom has a home for the fallen and the broken-hearted. It is 
well that there should bo some healing asylum where one can find 
refuge from the ingratitude and perfidy of the world. That home 
has been, and shall ever be found in the city of the successors of St. 
Peter, and I close this sad and soothing train of reflections, by 
oflViiug up a hearlfelt prayer for the devoted patriot, who, I trust, 
has found that lasting home, " where sorrow and grief shall be no 
more." 

Jvly excursions through Ostia, All)ani, Frescati, and Tivoli, &c., 
during which I sojourned chiefly in the convents that are scattered 
throughout those districts, afforded much of instructive and agree- 
able relaxation. The curiosities of those classic territories are as 
famili.ar as the territories themselves are far famed, nor shall I 
occupy the readei-'s time by their repetition. The lives of the soli- 
tary anchorets of Camaldoli would appear too tame a narrative to 



REV. DR. McIIALE. 829 

some who might reli.sh better more varied and stirring scenes. 
Yet among those monks and su<,h other recluses, is to be found a 
cheerfulness and lightness of heart to which the world is an utter 
stranger, and which it can never imagine to be the inhabitant of such 
abodes. There was one convent in particular, which I felt peculiar 
gratification in visiting — that of St. Benedict, at Subiaco. Here, 
near (he brink of the Arno, and under a line of frowning rocks, 
parallel to the stream, is situated the monastery of the holy and 
celebrated founder of the Benedictines. Near, is another, dedicated 
to his sister St. Scholastica. I spent some days in this holy retreat, 
enjoying the kind hospitality of the good abbot. In the chapel, 
partlj' formed out of the cave in which the saint lay concealed for 
three years, fed by an intimate friend, I offered up the sacrifice of 
the Mass. A beautiful marble statue of the saint under the rock, 
together with the leaves, bearing the impress of the serpent, by 
which he was so tempted, that he rolled himself amidst the thorns to 
extinguish the flames of concupiscence, still recall the memory of his 
early combats and his early triumphs. 

I returned to Rome before Palm Sunday, remaining there during 
the ceremonies of Holy AVeek. It was a week that embodied more 
of the impressive lessons and pi'actice of religion than many other 
weeks put together. Many visit Rome from afar, though unable to 
remain longer than during those few days, and well do they find 
their toil and piety rewarded. The solemn tones of the Miserere 
in the Sixtine Chapel, make them forget all their cares and fatigues, 
and transport the soul to heaven. The kind and charitable attention 
paid to the pilgrims, in the establishment set apart for that purpose, 
makes such an impression on strangers, that I have heard yoimg 
Americans exclaim with wonder and delight, that if there was true 
religion in the world, it was to be found in the charity of Rome. 
The washing of the feet by the Holy Father, is another tender and 
affecting office, which fails not to exhibit, in the minds of the aston- 
ished spectators, the connection between him and the Founder of the 
Church, whose humility and charity he thus imitates. In my 
observations on Christmas day, I have already given some faint idea 
of the Pontifical Mass. The Pontifical Mass of Easter Sunday 
brings an additional ceremony of most imposing solemnity — the 
benediction from the balcony of St. Peter's : one cannot witness a 



830 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

more touching or magnificent ceremony. The Holy Father, accom- 
panied by the cardinals, bishops, prelates and other ecclesiastics^ 
who formed the procession, ascended to the centi-e of the balcony; 
the vast square was thronged with the moving multitudes below ; 
doubtless, there were among them foreigners who differed in faith 
from the vast body of the people. The Pontiff lifted his ai'm, waved 
his hand in the form of a cross ; no sooner did he pronounce the 
blessing, than all knelt, and, as if under the influence of the same 
mysterious spirit that subdued St. Paul, I think there was not one 
that was not prostrate to receive, through the person of his Vicar 
upon earth, the benediction of the Redeemer of the world. 

^ John, Bishop op IMakonia. 



Address in His Own Defence. 



A, M. Sullivan, M.P. 



[831] 




IRELAND, FAREWELL! 



Address 

Delivered by A. M. Sullivan, M. P., in His Own Defence, 

IN Green Street Court House, Dublin, Feb. 20, 1868. 



^iS^Y Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury, — I rise to address 
gK^^^ yon under circimistances of cmhaiTiissment which will, I 
'^JkS hope, secure for me a little consideration and indulgence at 
your hands. I have to ask you at the outset to banish any prejudice 
that iniglit arise in your minds against a man who adopts the singular 
course — who undertakes the serious responsibility — of pleading his 
own defence. Such a proceeding might l)c thought to be dictated 
cither by disparagement of the ordinary legal advocacy, by some 
poor idea of personal vanity, or by way of reflection on the tribunal 
before which the defence is made. jMy conduct is dictated b)- neither 
of these considerations or influences. Last of all men living should 
I reflect upon the ability, zeal, and fidelity of the Bar of Ireland, 
represented as it has been in my own behalf, within the past two 
days, by a man whose heart and genius are, thank God, still left to 
the service of our country, and represented, too, as it has been here 
this day by that gifted young advocate, the echoes of whose elo- 
quence still resound in this court, and place me at disadvantage in 
immediately following him. And, assuredly, I design no disrespect 
to this court; either to tribunal in the abstract or to the individual 
judges who preside, from one of whom I heard two dsiys ago, deliv- 
ered in my own case, a cliarge of which I shall say — though followed 
by a verdict which alread}' consigns me to prison — that it was, judg- 
ing it as a whole, the fairest, the clearest, the most just and impar- 
tial ever given, to my knowledge, in a political case of this kind in 
Ireland between the subject and the Crown. No; I stand here in 
my own defence to-day, because long since I formed the opinion 

(S33) 



834 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

that on many grounds, in such a prosecution as this, such a course 
■would he the most fair and most consistent for a man like mo. That 
resolution I was, for the sake of others, induced to depart from on 
Saturday last, in the first prosecution against me. When it came to 
be seen that I was the first to be tried out of two jouruaiists prose- 
cuted, it was strongly urged on me that my course and the result of 
my trial might largely affect the case of the other journalists to be 
tried after me ; and that I ought to waive my individual views and 
feelings, and have the utmost legal ability brought to bear in behalf 
of the case of the national press at the first point of conflict. I did 
so. I was defended by a bar not to be surpassed in the kingdom for 
ability and earnest zeal ; yet the result was what I anticipated. For 
I knew, as I had held all along, that in a case like this, where law 
and fact are left to the jur}^, legal ability is of no avail if tlie Crown 
comes in with its arbitrary power of moulding the jurj'. In that case, 
as in this one, I openly, publicly, and distinctly announced that I for 
my part would challenge no one, whether with cause or without cause. 
Yet the Crown, in the face of this fact, and in a case where they knew 
that, at least, the accused had no like power of peremptory chal- 
lenge, did not venture to meet me on equal footing ; did not venture 
to abstain from their practice of absolute challenge ; in fine, did not 
dare to trust their case to twelve men "indifferently chosen," as the 
constitution supposes a jury to be. Now, gentlemen, before I enter 
further upon this jury question, let me say that with me this is no 
complaint merely against "the Tories." On this, as well as on nu- 
merous other subjects, it is well known that it has been my unfortu- 
nate lot to arraign both Whigs and Tories. I say further, that I 
care not a jot whether the twelve men selected or permitted by the 
Crown to try me, or rather to convict me, be twelve of my own co- 
religionists and political compatriots, or twelve Protestants, Con- 
servatives, Tories or " Orangemen." Understand me clearly on this. 
My objection is not to the individuals comprising the jury. You may 
be all Catholics, or you maybe all Protestants, for aught that affects 
my protest, which is against the mode by which you are selected — 
selected by the Crown — their choice for their own ends — smd not 
"indift'crently chosen " between the Crown and the accused. You 
may disappoint or you may justify the calculations of the Crown 
official who has picked you out from the panel, by negative or posi- 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 835 

tive choice (I being silent and powerless) — you may or may not be 
all he supposes ; the outrage on the spirit of the constitution is the 
same. I say, by such a system of picking a jury by the Crown, I 
am not put upon my country. 

Gentlemen, from the first moment these proceedings were com- 
menced against me, I think it will be admitted that I endeavored 
to meet them fairly and squarely, promptly and directly. I have 
never once turned to the right or to the left, but gone straight to 
the issue. I have from the outset declared my perfect readiness to 
meet the charges of the Crown. I did not care when or where they 
tried me. I said I would avail of no technicality — that I would 
object to no juror — Catholic, Protestant, or Dissenter. All I 
asked — - all I demanded — was to be " put upon my country " in the 
real, fair, and full sense and spirit of the constitution. All I asked 
was that the Crown would keep its hand off the panel, as I would 
lieep off mine. I had lived fifteen years iu this city ; and I should 
have lived in vain if, amongst the men that knew me in that time, 
whatever might be their political or religious creed, I feared to have 
my acts, my conduct, or principles tried. It is the first and most 
original condition of society that a man shall subordinate his pub- 
lic acts to the welfiire of the community, or, at least, acknowledge 
the right of those amongst whom his lot is cast, to judge him on 
such an issue as this. Freely 1 acknowledged that right. Readily 
have I responded to the call to submit to the judgment of my 
country the question whether, in demonstrating my sorrow .and 
sympathy for misfortune, my admiration for fortitude, my vehement 
indignation against what I considered to be injustice, I had gone 
too far and invaded the rights of the community. Gentlemen, I 
desire, in all that I have to say, to keep or to be kept within what is 
regular and seemly, and above all to utter nothing wanting in 
resjiect for the court ; but I do say, and I do protest, that I have not 
got trial by jury according to the spirit and meaning of the consti- 
tution. It is as representatives of the general community, not as 
representatives of the crown officials, the constitution supposes 
you to sit in tliat box. If you do not fah-ly represent the commu- 
nity, and if you are not empanelled indifferently in that sense, yon 
are no jury in the spirit of the constitution. I care not how the 
crown practice may be within the technical letter of the law, it 



83G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

violates the intent and meaning of the constitution, and it is not 
" trial by jury." Let us suppose the scene removed, say, to France. 
A hundred names are returned on what is called a panel by a state 
functionary for the trial of a journalist charged uith sedition. The 
accused is powerloss to I'cmove any name from the list unless for 
over-age or non-residence . But the Imperial prosecutor has tlie 
arbitrary power of ordering as many as he pleases to "stand aside." 
By liiis means he puts or allows on tho jury only whomsoever he 
pleases. lie can, beforehand, select the twelve, and, l)y wij)ing 
out, if it suits him, the eighty-eight other names, put the twelve of 
his own choosing into the box. Can this be called trial by jury? 
"Would not it be the same thing, in a more straightforward way, to 
let the Crown Solicitor send out a policeman and collect twelve 
well-accredited persons of liis own mind and opinion? For my own 
part, I would prefer this plain dealing, and consider far preferable 
the more rude but honest hostility of a drumhead court-martial. 
[Applause in the court.] Again I say, understand me well, I am 
objecting to the principle, tho system, the practice, and not to the 
twelve gentlemen now before me as individuals. Personally, I am 
contident that, being citizens of Dublin, whatever your views or 
opinions, you are honorable and conscientious men. You may have 
strong prejudices against me or my principles in public life — very 
likely you have ; but I doubt not that, though these may uncon- 
sciously tinge your judgment and influence your verdict, you Mill 
not consciously violate the obligations of j-our oath. And I care 
not whether the Crown, in permitting you to be the twelve, ordered 
three, or thirteen, or thirty others to " stand by " — or whether those 
thus arbitrarily put aside were Catholics or Protestants, Liberals, 
Conservatives, or Nationalists — the moment the Crown puts its 
finger at all on the panel, in a case where the accused has no equal 
right, the essential character of the jury was changed, and the spirit 
of the constitution was outraged. And now, what is the charge 
against my fellow-traversers and myself? The Solicitor-General 
put it very pithily awhile ago when he said our crime was, ''glori- 
fying the cause of murder." The story of the Crown is a very terri- 
ble, a very startling one. It alleges a state of things which could 
hardly be supposed to exist amongst the Thugs of India. It depicts 
a population so hideously depraved that thirty thousand of them in 



A. M. SULLIVAN. §37 

one place, and tens of tlioiisands of them in various other places, 
arrayed themselves puhliciy in procession to honor and glorify mur- 
der — to sympatliize Avith murderers as murderers. Yes, gentle- 
men, that is the Crown ease, or they have no case at all — that the 
funeral procession in Dul)lin, on the 8th December last, was a 
demonslration of sympathy wilh nuirder as murder. For j'ou will 
have ni)te;I that never once, in his smart narration of the Crown 
story, did ilr. Harrison allow even the faintest glimmer to appear 
of any other possililc complexion or construction of our conduct. 
"Why, I could have imagined it easy for him not merely to state his 
own case, but to state ours too, and show where we failed, and 
where his own side prevailed. I could easily imagine Mr. Harrison 
stating our view of the matter — and combating it. But he never 
once dared to even mention our case. His whole aim was to hide 
it from you, and to fasten, as best such efforts of bis could fasten, 
in }-our minds this one miserable ri'frain — " They glorified the cause 
of murder and assassination." But this is no new trick. It is the 
old story of the nialigncrs of our people. They call the Irish a 
turbulent, riotous, crime-loving, law-hating race. They arc forever 
pointing to the unhappy fact — for, gentlemen, it is a fac't — that, 
between the Irish peojole nnd the laws under which they now live, 
there is little or no .sympathy, liut bitter estrangement and hostility 
of feeling or of action. Bear with me if I examine this charge, since 
an understanding of it is necessary in order to judge our conduct on 
the 8th December last. I am driven upon this extent of defonci by 
the singular conduct of the Solicitor-General, who, with a temerity 
Avhich he will repent, actually opened the page of Irish history, 
going back upon it just .so far as it served his own purpose, and no 
farther. Ah ! fatal hour for my prosecutors when they appealed to 
history ! For, assuredly, that is the tril>unal that Avill vindicate the 
Irish people,- and confound those who malign them as sympathizers 
with assassination and glorifiers of murder — • 

Solicitor-General — ■ Jly lord, I must really call upon you — I deny 
that I ever — 

Mr. Justice Fitzgerald — Proceed, ilr. Sullivan. 

Mr. Sullivan — My lord, I took down the Solicitor-General's 
words. I quote them accurately as he spoke them, and he cannot 
get rid of them now. "Glorifiers of the cause of murder" was his 



838 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

designation of my fellow-traversers and myself, and our fifty thou- 
sand fellow-mourners in the funeral procession ; and before I sit 
down I will make him rue the utterance. Gentlemen of the jury, if 
British law be held in " disesteem " — as the crown prosecutors plu-ase 
it — here in Ireland, there is an explanation for that fact other than 
that supplied by the Solicitor-General, namely, the wickedness of 
seditious persons like myself, and the criminal sympathies of a peo- 
ple ever ready to "glorify the cause of murder." Mournful, most 
mournful, is the lot of that land where the laws are not respected — 
nay, revered by the jieople. No greater curse could befall a country 
than to have the laws estranged from popular esteem, or in antago- 
nism with the national sentiment. Everything goes wrong under 
such a state of things. The ivy will cling to the oak, and the ten- 
drils of the vine reach forth towards strong support. But moi-e 
anxiously and naturally still does the human heart iustinctively seek 
an object of reverence and love, as well as of j^rotection and support, 
in law, authority, sovereignty. At least, among a virtuous people 
like ours, there is ever a yearning for those relations which are, and 
ought to be, as natural between a people and their government as 
between the children and the parent. I sa}' for myself, and I firmly 
believe I speak the sentiments of most Irishmen when I say, that, so 
far from experiencing satisfaction, we experience pain in our present 
relations with the law and governing power ; and we long for the 
day when happier relations may be restored between the laws and 
the national sentiment iu Ireland. We Irish are no race of assassins 
or "glorifiers of murder." From the most remote ages, in all cen- 
turies, it has l^een told of our people that they were pre-eminently 
a justice-loving people. Two hundred and lift}' years ago tiie prede- 
cessor of the Solicitor-General — an English Attorney-General — it 
maj'^ be necessary to tell the learned gentleman that his name was 
Sir John Davis (for historical as well as geographical * knowledge 
seems to be rather scarce amongst the present law-ofEccrs of the 
Crown) [laughtei-] — held a veiy diiferent opinion of them from that 

* On Mr. Sullivan's first trial, the Solicitor-General, until stopped and corrected 
by the court, was suggesting to the jury that there was no such place as Kuock- 
rochery, and that a Fenian proclamation which had been published in the " Weeltly 
News" as having been posted at that place, was, iu fiict, composed in Mr. Sullivan's 
office. Mr. Justice Dcasy, however, pointedly corrected and reproved this blunder 
on the part of Mr. Harrison. 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 839 

put forth to-day by the Solicitor-General. Sir John Davis said no 
people in the world loved equal justice more than the Irish, even 
where the decision was against themselves. That character the 
Irish have ever borne and bear still. But, if you want the explana- 
tion of this " disesteem " and hostility for British law, you must trace 
effect to cause. It will not do to stand by the river side near where 
it flows into the sea, and wonder why the water continues to I'un by. 
N(it I, not my fellow traversers, not my fellow countrymen, are ac- 
countable for the antagonism between law and popular sentiment in 
this country. Take up the sad story where you will, yesteixlay, 
last month, last year, last century, two centuries ago, three centu- 
ries, five centuries, six centuries, and what will you find? English 
law presenting itself to the Irish people in a guise forbidding sym- 
pathy or respect, and evoking fear and resentment. Take it at its 
birth in this country. Shake your minds free of legal theories and 
legal fictions, and deal with facts. This court where I now stand is 
the legal and political heir, descendant, and representative of the 
first law-court of the Pale six or seven centuries ago. Within that 
Pale were a few thousand English settlers, and of them alone did 
the law take cognizance. The Irish nation — the millions outside 
the Pale — were known only as " the King's Irish enemies." The 
law classed them with the wild beasts of nature whom it was lawful 
to s\viy. Later on in our history, we find the Irish near the Pale 
sometimes asking to be admitted to the benefits of English law, since 
they were forbidden to have any of their own; but their petitions 
were refused. Gentlemen, this was English law as it stood towards 
the Irish people for ceutui'ies ; and wonder, if you will, that the 
Irish people held it in " disesteem " : — 

" The Insh were denied the right of bringing actions In any of the English courts 
in Ireland for trespasses to their lands, or for assaults and batteries to their per- 
sons. Accordingly, it was answer enough to the action in such a case to say that 
the plaintiff was an Irishman, unless he could produce a special charter giving him 
the rights of an Englishman. If he sought damage against an Englishman for turn- 
ing him out of his land, for the seduction of his daughter Nora, or for the beating 
of his wife Devorgil, or for the driving off of his cattle, it was a good defence to say 
lie was a mere Irishman. And if an Englishman was indicted for manslaughter, if 
the man slain was an Irishman, he pleaded that the deceased was of the Irish nation, 
and that it was no felony to kill an Irishman. For this, however, there was a fine 
of five marlis payable to the King ; but mostly they killed us for nothing. If it hap- 
pened that the man killed was a servant of an Englishman, he added to the plea of 



840 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the dpceascd being an Irisliman, tliat, if tiic master slionld ever demand damages, 
ho wonid be ready to satisfy him." 

That w;is the eirg of Flngiibh luw in Ireland. That was the seed — 
that was the plant — do yvui Monder it' the tree is not now esteemed 
and loved? It you poison a stream at its source, will you marvel if 
down throuuli all its ct)urscs the deadly element is present? Now 
trace from this, its !>irtli, English law in Ireland — trace down to 
this honr — and examine when or where it ever set itself to a recon- 
ciliation with the Irish people. Observe the plain relevancy of this 
to my case. 1 and men like me are held accountable for !)ringing 
law into hatred and coniempt in Ireland, and, in presenting this 
charge against me, the Solicit(n--Gcneral appealed to history. I re- 
tort the ch;uge on my accusers, and I will trace down to our own 
day the relatinns of hostility which English law itself established 
between itself and the people of Iichind. Gentlemen, for four hun- 
dred years — down to 1G07 — the Irish people had no existence in 
the eye of the law ; or rather, much worse, were viewed by it as 
"the King's Irish enemic." But even within the Pale, how did it 
reconmiend itself to [jojiular reverence and affection ? Ah ! gentle- 
men, I will show that in those days, just as there have been in our 
own, there were executions and scaffold-scenes which evoked popu- 
lar horror and resentment, tho\igh they were all "according to law," 
and not to be questioned unless by " seditionists." 1 he scaffold 
streamed with the blood of those whom the i)coi)le loved and re- 
vered — how could they love and revere the scaffold? Yet, 'twas 
all "according to law." The sanctuary was profaned and rifled ; the 
priest was slain or banished: 'twas all "according to law," no doubt, 
and to hold law in "disesteem" is "sedition." Men were convicted 
and executed "according to law;" yet the people demonstrated 
sympathy for them, and resentment against their executioners — 
most perversely, as a Solicitor-General, doubtless, would say. And, 
indeed, the state papers contain accounts of those demonstrations 
written by Crown officials, which sound very like the Solicitor- 
General's speech to-day. Take, for instance, the execution — "ac- 
cording to law" — of the "popish bishop " O'tlurley. Here is the 
letter of a state functionary on the subject: — 

" I could not before now so impart to her Majesty as to Icnow her mind touching- 
the same for your lordship's direction. Wherefore she having at length resolved, i 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 841 

have, accordingly, by licr commandment, to signify her Majesty's pleasure unto you 
touciiing Hurley, which is this : That the man being so notorious and ill a subject, 
as appearcth by all the circumstances of his cause ho is, you proceed, if it may be, 
to his execution by ordinary trial of hira for it. How bo it, in case you shall fini.1 
the effect of his course doubtful by reason of the affection of such as shall be on 
his jury, and Ijy reason of the supposal conceived by the lawyers of that country, 
that he can hardly be found guilty for his treason committed in foreign parts against 
her Majesty: then her pleasure is you take A suoi:tku way wnu iii.M by martial 
law. So, as you may see, it is referred to your discretion, whether of those two 
ways your lordship will take with him, aud the man being so resolute to reveal no 
more matter, it is thought best to have no fuktiier toutures used against him, but 
that you proceed forthwith to his execution in manner aforesaid. As for her 
Majesty's good acceptation of your careful travail in this matter of Ilurlej', you 
need nothing to doubt, and, for your better assurance thereof, she has commanded 
me to let your lordship understand tliat, as well as in all others the like, as in the 
case of Hurley, she cannot but greatly allow and commend your doings." 

Well, tbcy put hi.s feet into tin boots filled v.ilh oil, and thou 
placed him standing in the fire. Eventually they cut off his head, 
tofe out his bowels, and cut the limbs from his body. Gentlemen, 
'twas all ''according to law ; " and to demonstrate sympathy for him 
and "disesteem" of that law was "sedition." But do you wonder 
greatly that law of that complexion failed to secure popular sym- 
pathy and respect? One more illustration, gentlemen, taken from 
a period somewhat later on. It is the execution — "according to 
law," gentlemen, entirely "according to law" — of another popish 
bishop named O'Devany. The account is that of a Crown official of 
the time — some most worthy predecessor of the Solicitor-General. 
I read it from the recently published work of the Rev. C. P. Mce- 
han : "On the 28th of January, the bishop and priest, being 
arraigned at the King's Bench, were each condemned of treason, 
and adjudged to be executed the Saturday following ; which day 
being come, a priest or two of the Pope's brood, with holy water 
and other holy stufis" — (no sneer was that, at ail, gentlemen ; no 
sneer at Catholic practices, for a Crown official never sneers 
at Catholic practices) — "were sent to sanctify the gallows where- 
on they were to die. About two o'clock P. M., the traitors were 
delivered to the sherifls of Dublin, who placed them in a small 
car, which was followed by a great multitude. As the car j)ro- 
gresscd the spectators knelt down, but the bishop, sitting still like 
a block, would not vouchsafe them a word, or turn his head aside. 
The multitude, however, following the car, made such a dole and 



g-t2 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

lamentation after him, as the heavens themselves resounded the 
echoes of their outcries." (Actually a seditious funeral proces- 
sion — made up of the ancestors of those thirty thousand men, 
women, and children, who, according to the Solicitor-General, 
glorified the cause of murder on the 8th of last December.) "Being 
come to the gallows, whither they Avere followed by troops of the 
citizens, men and women of all classes, most of the best being pres- 
ent, the latter kept up such a shrieking, such a howling, and such a 
hallooing, as if St. Patrick himself had been gone to the gallows, 
could not have made greater signs of grief; but when they saw him 
turned from off the gallows, they raised the whobub with such a 
mainc cry, as if the rebels had come to rifle the city. Being ready 
to mount the ladder, when he was pressed by some of the bystand- 
ers to s^jeak, he repeated fi-equentl}'. Sine me quceiio. The execu- 
tioners had no sooner taken off the bishop's head, but the townsmen 
of Dublin began to flock about him, some taking up the head with 
pitying aspect, accompanied with sobs and sighs ; some kissed it 
with as religious an appetite as ever they kissed the Pax ; some cut 
away all the hair from the head, which they pi'eserved for a relic ; 
some others were practisers to steal the head away, but the execu- 
tioner gave notice to the sheriffs. Now, when ho began to quarter 
the body, the women thronged about him, and happy was she that 
could get but her handkerchief dipped in the blood of the traitor ; 
and the body being once dissevered in four quarters, they neither 
left finger nor toe, but they cut them ofl' and carried them away ; and 
some others that could get no holy monuments that appertained to 
his person, with their knives they shaved off chips from the hallowed 
gallows ; neither could they omit the halter wherewith he was hanged, 
but it was rescued for holy uses. The same night after the execu- 
tion, a great crowd flocked about the gallows, and there spent the 
fore part of the night in heathenish howling, and performing many 
popish ceremonies ; and after midnight, being then Candlemas-day, 
in the morning having their priest present in readiness, they had 
Mass after Mass till, daylight being come, they departed to their 
own houses." 

There was "sympathy with sedition" for j'ou, gentlemen. No 
wonder the Crown official who tells the story — some worthy prede- 
cessor of Mr. Harrison — should be horrified at such a demonstra- 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 843 

tion. I will sadden you with no further illustrations of English law, 
but I think it would be admitted that, after centuries of such law, 
one need not wonder if the people hold it in "hatred and contempt." 
With the opening of the seventeenth century, however, came a 
golden and glorious opportunity for ending that melancholy — that 
terrible state of things. In the I'eign of James I. English law, for 
the first time, extended to every corner of this kingdom. The Irish 
■came into the new order of things frankly and in good faith ; and if 
wise counsels prevailed then amongst our rulers, oh, what a blessed 
ending there might have been to the bloody feud of centuries ! The 
Irish submitted to the Gaelic king, to whom had come the English 
crown. In their eyes he was of a friendly, nay, of a kindred race. 
He was of a line of Gaelic kings that had often befriended Ireland. 
Submitting to.him was not yielding to the brutal Tudor. Yes, that 
was the hour, the blessed opportunity for laying the foundation of a 
real union between the three kingdoms — annion.of equal national 
rights under the one crown. This was what the Irish expected, and 
in this sense they, in that hour, accepted the new dynasty. And it 
is remarkable that, from that day to this, though England has seen 
bloody revolutions and violent changes of rulers, Ireland has ever 
held faithfully — too faithfully — to the sovereignty thus adopted. 
But how were they received ? How were their expectations met? 
By persecution, proscription, and wholesale plunder, even by that 
miserable Stuart. His son came to the throne. Disaflection broke 
out in England and Scotland. Scottish Protestant Fenians, called 
"Covenanters," took the field against him, because of the attempt to 
establish Episcopalian Protestanism as a state church. By armed 
rebellion against their lawful king — I regret to say it — they won 
rights which now most largely tend to make Scotland contented and 
loyal. I say it is to be regretted that those rights were thus won ; 
for I say that, even at best, it is a good largely mixed with evil where 
rights are won by resort to violence or revolution. His concessions 
to the Calvinist Fenians in Scotland did not save Charles. The 
English Fenians, under their Head Centre Cromwell, drove him from 
the throne, and murdered him on a scaffold in London. How did 
the Irish meanwhile act? They stood true to their allegiance ; they 
took the field for the king. "What was the result ? They were given 
over to slaughter and plunder by the brutal soldieiy of the English 



814 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Fenians. Their nobles and gentry were lieggared and proscribed ; 
their children were sold as white slaves to West Indian planters ; 
and their gallant struggles for the king, their S3inpatliy for the roy- 
alist cause, was actually denounced by the English Fenians as 
"sedition," "rebellion," "lawlessness," "sj'nipath}' with crime." 
Ah ! gentlemen, the evils thus planted in our midst will survive and 
work their influence ; yet some men wonder the English law is held 
in " disL'stocni " in Ireland ! Time went on, gentlemen ; time Ment 
on. Another James sat on the throne ; and again Englis!) Frotestant 
Feniunism conspired for the overthrow of their sovereign. They 
invited "foreign emissaries" to come over from Holland and Sweden 
to begin the revolution for them. They drove their legitimate 
king from the throne — never more to return. How did the Iiish 
act in thit hour? Alas! Ever too loyal — ever only too ready to 
stand by the throne and laws, if only treated with justice or kindli- 
ness — they took the field for the king, not against him. He landed 
on our shores ; and had the English Fenians rested content Avith 
rcl)elling themselves, and allowed us to remain loyal as we desired 
to 1)0, we might now l)o a neighboring but friendly and independent 
kingdom under the ancient Stuart line. King James came here and 
opened his Irish parliament in person. Oh, who will say in that 
brief hotu-, at least, the Irish nation was not reconciled to the throne 
and laws? King, parliament and people, were blended in one ele- 
ment of enthusiasm, joy and hope, the first time for ages Ireland had 
known such a joy. Yes — 

" Wo, too, IkkI our day — it was brief, it is ended — 

When !i King dwelt among us — no strange King — but omss; 
"Wlicn tlio .sliout of a people delivered ascended, 

And shook the green banner that hung on yon towers. 
"We saw it like leaves in the snminer-tinie shiver; 
AVo read the gold legend that blazoned it o'er — 
' To-day — now or never; to-day and forever' — 
O Gpd ! have we seen it to see it no more? " 

[Applause in court.] Once more the Irish people bled and sacri- 
ficed for their loyalty to the throne and laws. Once more confis- 
cation devastated the land, and the blood of the loyal and true was 
poured like rain. The English Fenians and the foreign emissaries 
triumphed, aided by the brave Frotestant rebels of Ulster. King 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 845 

William carac to the throne — a prince whose character is greatly 
misiindcrstood in Ireland : a brave, courageous soldier, and a toler- 
ant man, could he have had his way. The Irish who had fought and 
lost, submitted on terms ; and had law even now been just or toler- 
ant, it was open to the revolutionary regime to have made the Irish 
good sulijects. But what took place? Tlic penal code came, in all 
its horror, to fill the Irish heart with hitred and resistance. I will 
I'cad for you what a Protestant historian — a man of ieai-ning and 
ability — who is now listening to me in this court — has written 
of that code. I quote " Godkin's History," published by CasscU of 
London : — 

" Tiio eighteenth century," says Mr. Godkin, "was the era of persecution, in 
whicli the law did the worlc of tlie sword more effectnally and more .safely. Then 
was established a code framed with almost diabolical ingenuity to extinguish nat- 
ural affection — to foster perfidy and hypocrisy — to petrify conscience — to perpet- 
uate brutal ignorance — to facilitate the work of tyranny — by rendering tlic vices 
of slavery inherent and natural in the Irish character, and to make Protestantism 
almost irredeemably odious as the monstrous incarnation of all moral perversions." 

Gentlemen, in that fell spirit English law addressed itself to a 
dreadful purpose here in Ireland; and, mark you, that code pre- 
vailed down to our own time ; down to this very generation. 
"Law" called on the son to sell his father; called on the (lock to 
betray the pastor. "Law" forbade us to educate — forbade us to 
worship God in the faith of our fathers. " Law " made us outcasts, 
scourged us, trampled us, plundered us — do you marvel that, 
amongst the Irish people, law has been held in "disesteem?" Do 
you think this feeling arises from " sympathy with assassination or 
murder?" Yet, if we had been let alone, I doubt not that time 
■would have fused the conquerors and the conquered, here in Ireland as 
elsewhere. Even while the millions of the people were kept outside 
the con.stitution, the spirit of nationality began to appear, and under 
its blessed influence toleration touched the heart of the Irish-born 
Protestant. Yes, thank God — thank God, for the sake of our poor 
country, where sectarian bitternsss has wrought such wrong — it 
was an Irish Protestant parliament that struck off the first link of the 
penal chain. And lo ! once more, for a bright, brief day, Irish 
national sentiment was in warm sympathy and heart-felt accord with 
the laws. "Eighty-two "came. Irish Protestant patriotism, backed 



84G TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

by the hearty sympathy of the Catholic millions, raised up Ireland 
to a proud and glorious position ; lifted our country from the ground, 
where she \ay pvostrtde under the sword of England — but what do 
I say? This is "sedition." It has this week been decreed sedition 
to picture Ireland thus.* Well, then they rescued her from what I 
will call the loving embrace of her dear sister Britannia, and en- 
throned her in her rightful place, a queen among the nations. Had 
the brightness of that era been prolonged — picture it, think of it^ 
what a country would ours be now ! Think of it ! And contrast 
what we arc with what we might he ! Comjiare a jjopulation, filled 
with burning memories — disafiected, sullen, hostile, vengeful — 
with a people, loyal, devoted, happy, contented ; and England, too, 
all the happier, the more secure, the more great and free. But sad 
is the story. Our independent national legislature was torn from us 
by means, the iniquity of which, even among English writers, is now 
proclaimed and execrated. By fraud and by force that outrage on 
law, on right, and justice, Avas consummated. In speaking thus I 
sj^cak " sedition." No one can write the facts of Irish history with- 
out committing sedition. Yet every writer and speaker now will 
tell you that the overthrow of our national constitution, sixty-seven 
years ago, was an iniquitous and revolting scheme. But do you,, 
then, marvel that the laws imposed on us by the power that perpe- 
trated that deed are not revered, loved and respected? Do you 
believe that that want of respect arises from the " seditions " of men 
like my fellow-traversers and myself? Is it wonderful to see 
estrangement between a people and laws imposed on them by the 
overruling influence of another nation ? Look at the lessons — 
unhappy lessons — taught our people by that London legislature 
where their own will is ovei'borne. Concessions refused and resisted 
as long as they durst be withheld ; and when granted at all, granted 
only after passion has been aroused and the whole nation been 
embittered. The Irish people sought Emancipation. Their great 
leader was dogged at every step by hostile government proclama- 
tiiins and crown prosecutions.- Coercion act over coercion act was 
rained upon us ; yet O'Connell triumphed. But how and in what 

* For publishing an illustration in the " Weekly News " thus picturing England's 
policy of coercion, Mr. Sullivan had been found guilty of seditious libel on the pre- 
vious trial. 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 347 

spirit was Emancipation gi'aiited ? Ah ! tliere never was a speech 
more pregnant with mischief, with sedition, with revohitionary 
teaching — never words tended more to bring law and government 
into contempt — than tlie words of the English premier when he 
declared Emancipation must, sorely against his Avill, be granted if 
England M^oiild not face a civil war. That was a bad lesson to teach 
Irishmen. Worse still was taught them. O'Connell, the great 
constitutional leader, a man with whom loyalty and respect for the 
laws was a fundamental principle of action, led the people towai'ds 
further liberation — the liberation, not of a creed, but a nation. What 
did he seek ? To bring once more the laws and the national will 
into accord ; to reconcile the people and laws by restoring the con- 
stitution of Queen, Lords and Commons. How was he met by the 
government ? By the flourish of the sword ; by the drawn sabre and 
the shotted gun, in the market-place and the highway. " Law " 
finally grasped him as a conspirator, and a picked jury gave the 
Crown then, as now, such verdict as was required. The venerable 
apostle of constitutional doctrine was consigned to prison, while a 
sorrowing, aye, a maddened nation wept for him outside. Do you 
marvel that they held in "disesteem " the law and government that 
acted thus? Do you marvel that to-day, in Ireland, as in every 
century of all those through which I have traced this state of things^ 
the people -and the law scowl upon each other ? 

Gentlemen, do not misunderstand the purport of my argument. 
It is not for the purpose — it would be censurable — of merely open- 
ing the wounds of the past that I have gone back upon history some- 
what farther than the Solicitor-General found it advantageous to go. 
I have done it to demonstrate that there is a ti'uer reason than that 
alleged by the Crown in this case for the state of war — for, unhappily, 
that is what it is — which prevails between the people of Ireland and 
the laws under which they now live. And now apply all this to the 
present case, and judge you my guilt — judge you the guilt of those 
whose crime, indeed, is that they do not love and respect law and 
government as they are now administered in Ireland. Gentlemen the 
present prosecution arises directly out of what is known as the Man- 
chester tragedy. The Solicitor-General gave you his version, his 
fanciful sketch, of that sad affair ; but it will be my duty to give you 
the true facts, which differ considerably from the Crown story. The 



Sj[8 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Solicitor-General began with tolling us iibout " the broad summer's 
sun of the 18th of September." [Laughter.] Gentlemen, it seems 
very clear that the summer goes far into the }ear for those who enjoy 
the sweets of office : nay, I am sure it is summer " all the year round " 
Avith the Solicitor-General while the present ministry remain in. A 
goodly goldin harvest he and his colleagues are making in this sum- 
mer of pi'osccutions ; and they seem very well inclined to get up 
enough of them. [Laughter.] Well, gentlemen, I'm not complain- 
ing of that, but I will tell you who complain loudly — the "outs," 
"with whom it is midwinter, while the Solicitor-General and his 
friends are enjoying this summer. [Renewed laughter.] Well, 
gentlemen, some time last September, two prominent leaders of the 
Fenian movement — alleged to be so at least — named Kelly and 
Dcasy, were arrested in Manchester. In Manchester there is a con- 
siderable Irish population, and amongst them it was known those 
men had sympathizers. They wore broi:ght up at the police court ; 
and now, gentlemen, pray attentively mark this. The Irish execu- 
tive that morning telegraphed to the Manchester authorilies a strong 
warning of an attempted rescue. The Manchester police had full 
notice ; how did they treat the timely warning, a warning, which, if 
heeded, would have averted all this sad and terrible business which 
followed upon that day ? Gentlemen, the Jlanchester police authori- 
ties scoffed at the warning. They derided it as a "Ilirish" alarm. 
Wiiat ! The idea of low "Hirish" hodmen or laborers rescuing 
prisoners from them, the valiant and the brave! Why, gentlemen, 
the Seth Bromleys of the " force " in Manchester waxed hilarious and 
derisive over the idea. They would not ask even a truncheon to put 
to flight even a thousand of those despised " Hirish ; " and so, despite 
specific warning from Dublin, the van containing the two Fenian 
leaders, guarded by eleven police officers, set out from the police 
office to the jail. Now, gentlemen, I charge on the stolid vainglo- 
riousness in the first instance, and the contemptible pusillanimity 
in the second instance, of the Manchester police — the valiant Seth 
Bromleys — all that followed. On the skirts of the city the van was 
attacked by some eighteen Irish youths, having throe revolvers — 
three revolvers, gentlemen, and no more — amongst Hiem. The 
valor of the Manch<?stcr eleven vanished at the sight of those three 
revolvers — some of them, it seems, loaded with blank cartridge! 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 849 

The Soth Bromleys took to their heels. They abandoned the van. 
Now, gentlemen, do not understand me to call those policemen cow- 
ards. It is hard to blame an unarmed man who runs away from a 
pointed revolver, which, whether loaded or unloaded, is a powerful 
persuasion — to depart. But I do say that I believe in my soul that, 
if that had occurred here in Dublin, eleven men of our metropolitan 
police would have taken those three revolvers or perished in the 
attempt. [Applause.] Oh, if eleven Irish policemen had run away 
like that from a few poor English lads with barely three revolvers, 
how the press of England would yell in fierce denunciation ; why, 
they would trample to scorn the name of Irishman. [Applause in 
the court, which the officials vainly tried to silence.] 

Mr. Justice Fitzgerald — If these interruptions continue, the 
parties so offending must be removed. 

Mr. Sullivan^ I am sorry my lord, for the interruption; though 
not sorry the people should cndoi'se my estimate of the police. Well, 
gentlemen, the van was abandoned by its valiant guard ; but there 
remained inside one brave and faithful fellow, Brett by name. I am 
now giving you the facts as I in my conscience and soul believe they 
occurred; and as millions of my countrymen, aye, and thousands of 
Englishmen , too, solemnly believe them to have occurred, though they 
differ in one item widely from the Crown version. Brett refused to 
give up the key of the van which he held ; and the attacking party 
commenced various endeavors to break it open. At length one of 
them called out to fire a pistol into the lock and thus burst it open. 
The unfortunate Brett at that moment was looking through the key- 
hole, endeavoring to get a view of the inexplicable scene outside, 
when he received the bullet and fell dead. Gentlemen, that may be 
the true, or it may be the mistaken version. You may hold to the 
other, or you may hold to this. But whether I be mistaken therein 
or otherwise, I say here, as I would say if I stood now before my 
eternal Judge on the last day, I solemnly believe the mournful 
episode to have happened thus — I solenmly believe that the man 
Brett was shot by accident, and not by design. But even suppose 
your view differs sincerely from mine, will you, can you, hold 
that I, thus conscientiously persuaded, sympathize with murder, be- 
cause I sympathize with men hanged for that which I contend was 
accident, and not murder? That is exactly the issue in this case. 



850 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Well, the rescued Fenian leaders got away ; and then, when all was 
over — when the danger was passed — valor tremendous returned to 
the fleet-of-foot Manchester police. Oh, but they wreaked their ven- 
geance that night on the houses of the poor Irish in Manchester ! 
By a savage razzia they soon filled the jails with our poor country- 
men seized on suspicion. And then broke forth all over England 
that shout of anger and passion which none of us will ever forget. 
The national pride had been sorely wounded ; the national power 
had been openly and humiliatingly defied ; the national fury ^'as^ 
aroused. On all sides resounded the hoarse shout for vengeance, 
swift and strong. Then was seen a sight the most shameful of its 
kind that this century has exhibited — a sight at thought of which 
Englishmen yet will hang their heads for shame, and which the 
English historian will chronicle with reddened cheek — those poor 
and humble Irish youths led into the Manchester dock in chains ! In 
chains ! Yes ; iron fetters festering wrist and ankle ! Oh ! gentle- 
men, it was a fearful sight ; for no one can pretend that in the heart 
of powerful England there could be danger those poor Irish youths 
would overcome the authorities and capture Manchester. For what, 
then, were those chains put on untried prisoners? Gentlemen, it 
was at this point exactly that Irish sympathy came to the side of 
those prisoners. It was when we saw them thus used, and saw that, 
innocent or guilty, they would be immolated — sacrificed to glut the 
passion of the hour — that our feelings rose high and strong in their 
behalf. Even in England there were men — noble-hearted English- 
men, for England is never without such men — who saw that, if tried 
in the midst of this national frenzy, those victims would be sacrificed ; 
and accordingly efforts wei-e made for a postponement of the trial. 
But the roar of passion carried its way. Not even till the ordinary 
assizes would the trial be postponed. A special commission was 
sped to do the work while Manchester jurors were in a white heat of 
panic, indignation and fury. 

Then came the trial, which was just what might be expected. 
Witnesses swore ahead without compunction, and jurors be- 
lieved them without hesitation. Five men arraigned together as 
principals — Allen, Larkin, O'Brien, Shore, and Maguire — were found 
guilty, and, the judge concurring in the verdict, were sentenced to 
death. Five men — not three men, gentlemen — five men in the one 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 851 

verdict, not five separate verdicts. Five men by the same evidence 
and the same jury in the same verdict. AVas that a just verdict? 
The case of the Crown here to-day is that it was ; that it is " sedi- 
tion " to impeach that verdict. A copy of that conviction is handed 
in here as evidence to convict me of sedition for charging, as I do, 
that that was a wrong verdict, a bad verdict, a rotten and a 
false verdict. But what is the fact ! That her Majesty's ministers 
themselves admit and proclaim that it was a wrong verdict, a false 
verdict. The very evening those men were sentenced, thirty news- 
pa^Der reporters sent up to the Home Secretary a petition protesting 
that— the evidence of the witnesses and the verdict of the jury not- 
withstanding — there was at least one innocent man thus marked for 
execution. The government felt that the reporters were right and 
the jurors wrong. They pardoned Maguire as an innocent man — 
that same Maguire whose legal conviction is here put in as evidence 
that he and four others were truly murderers, to sympathize with 
whom is to commit sedition — nay, "to glorify the cause of murder." 
Well, after that our minds were easy. We considered it out of the 
question any man would be hanged on a verdict thus mined, blasted, 
and abandoned ; and believing those men innocent of murder, though 
guilty of another most serious legal crime — rescue with violence, and 
incidental, though not intentional loss of life — we rejoiced that a 
terrible mistake was, as we thought, averted. But now arose in 
redoubled fury the savage cry for blood. In vain, good men, noble 
and humane men, in England tried to save the national honor by 
breasting this horrible outburst of passion. They were overborne. 
Petitioners for mercy were mobbed and hooted in the streets. We 
saw all this ; we saw all this ; and think you it did not sink into our 
hearts? Fanc}', if you can, our feelings when we heard that yet 
another man out of five was respited — ah ! he was an American gen- 
tleman—an American, not an Irishman — but that the three Irishmen, 
Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, were to die — were to be put to death 
on M verdict and on evidence that would not hang a dog in England - 
AVe refused to the last to credit it ; and thus incredulous, deemed it 
idle to make any efibrt to save their lives. But it was true ; it was 
deadly true. And then, gentlemen, the doomed three appeared in a 
new character. Then they rose into the dignity and hei'oisni of 
mart3'rs. The manner in Vvhich they bore themselves through the 



852 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

dreadful ordeal cnn.ol)Ied them forever. It was tlien we all learned 
to love and revere tliem as patriots and Christians. Oh ! gentlemen, 
it is only at this point I feel my difBculty in addressing you whose 
religious faith is not that which is mine. For it is only Catholics who 
can understand the emotions aroused in Catholic hearts by conduct 
such as theii's in that dreadful hour. Catholics alone can understand 
how the last solemn declarations of such men, after receiving the 
last sacraments of the Church, and about to meet their great Judge 
face to face, can outweigh the reckless evidence of Manchester 
thieves and pickpockets. Yes ; in that hour they told us they were 
innocent, but were ready to die ; and wc believed them. We believe 
them still. Aye, do we ! They did not go to meet their God with 
a falsehood on their lips. On that night before their execution, oh, 
what a scene ! AVhat a picture did England present at the foot of 
the Manchester scalTold ! The brutal populace thronged tbither in 
tens of thousands. They danced ; tliey sang ; they blasphemed ; 
they chorused "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the Queen" by way 
of taunt and defiance of the men whose death agonies they had come 
to see ! Their shouts and brutal cries disturbed the doomed victims 
inside the prison as in their cells they prepared in prayer and medi- 
tation to meet their Creator and their God. Twice the police had 
to remove the crowd from around that wing of the prison, so that 
our poor brothers might in peace go through their last preparations 
for eternity, undisturbed by the yells of the multitude outside. Oh, 
gentlemen, gentlemen — that scene ! That scene in the grey cold 
morning when those innocent men were led out to die — to die an 
ignominious death before the wolfish mob ! With blood on fire, 
with bursting hearts, we read the dreadful story here in Ireland. 
We knew that these men would never have been thus sacrificed had 
not their offence been political, and had it not been that in their own 
way they represented the old struggle of the Irish race. We felt 
that, if time had but been permitted for English passion to cool 
down, English good feeling and right justice would have prevailed; 
and they never would have been put to death on such a verdict. 
All this we felt ; yet we were silent till we heard the press, that had 
hounded those men to death, falsely declaring that our silence was 
acquiescence in the deed that consigned them to murderers' graves. 
Of this I have personal knowledge, that, here in Dublin at least, 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 853 

nothing" was done or intended until the " Evening Mail " declared 
that popular feeling, which had had ample time to declare itself if it 
felt otherwise, quite recognized the justice of the execution. Then 
we resolved to make answer. Then Ireland made answer. For 
what monarch, the loftiest in the world, would such demonstrations 
be made, the voluntary oiferings of a people's grief? Think you it 
was "sympathy for mui'der" called us forth, or caused the priests of 
the Catholic Church to drape their churches? It is a libel to utter 
the base charge. No, no. Of the acts of those men at that rescue 
we had naught to say. Of their innocence of murder we were con- 
vinced. Their patriotic feelings, their religious devotion, we saw 
proved in the noble, the edifying manner of their death. We be- 
lieved them to have been unjustly sacrificed in a moment of national 
passion ; and we resolved to rescue their memory from the foul 
stains of their maligners, and make it a proud one forever with 
Irishmen. Sympathy with murder, indeed? What I am about to 
say will be believed, for I think I have shown no fear of consequences 
in standing by my acts and principles. I say for myself, and for the 
priests and people of Ireland, ^vho are affected by this case, that 
sooner would we burn our right hands to cinders than express, 
directly or indirectly, sympathy with murder ; and that our sym- 
pathy for Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, is based upon the conviction 
that they were innocent of any such crime. Gentlemen, having re- 
gard to all the circumstances of this sad business, having regard to 
the feelings under which we acted, think you, is it a true charge that 
we had for our intent and object the bi'inging of the administration 
of justice into contempt ? Does a man, by protesting ever so ve- 
hemently against an act of a jiot infallible tribunal, incur the charge 
of attempting its overthi'ow ? What evidence can be shown to you 
that we uttered a word against the general character of the adminis- 
tration of justice in this country, while denouncing this particular 
proceeding, which we say was a fearful failure of justice — a horrible 
blunder, a terrible act of passion ! None, — none. I say, for myself, 
I sincerely believe that in this country of ours justice is administered 
by the judges of the Irish Bench with a purity and impartiality be- 
tween man and man not to be surpassed in the universal world. Let 
me not be thought to cast reflection on this court, or the learned 
judges before whom I now stand, if I except in a certain sense, and 



g54 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

on some occasions, political trials between the subject and the Crown. 
Apart from this, I fearlessly say the bench of justice inlrehmd fully 
enjoj's, and is worthy of, respect and homage. I care not from 
what political party its members be drawn, I say that, with hardly 
an exception, when robed with the ermine, they become dead to the 
world of politics, and sink the politician in the loftier character of 
representative of sacred Justice. 

Yet, gentlemen, holding those views, I would, nevertheless, pro- 
test against and denounce such a trial as that in Manchester, if it 
had taken place in Ireland. For, what we contend is that the men 
in Manchester would never have been found guilty on such evidence, 
would never have been executed on such a verdict, if time had been 
given to let panic and passion pass away ; time to let English good 
sense and calm reason and sense of justice have sway. Now, gentle- 
men, judge ye me on this whole case ; for I have done. I have spoken 
at great length, but I plead not merely my own cause, but the cause 
of my country. For myself I care little. I stand before you here with 
the manacles, I might say, on my hands. Already a prison cell 
awaits me in Kilmainham. My doom, in any event, is sealed. Al- 
ready a conviction has been obtained against me for my opinions on 
this same event ; for it is not one arrow alone that has been shot 
from the Crown-ofEce quiver at me, at my reputation, my property, 
my liberty. In a few hours more my voice will be silenced ; but, 
before the world is shut out from me for a term, I appeal to your 
verdict, to the verdict of my fellow citizens, of my fellow country- 
men, to judge my life, my conduct, my acts, my principles, and say, 
am I a criminal. Sedition, in a rightly ordered community, is in- 
deed a crime. But who is it that challenges me ? Who is it that 
demands my loyalty ? Who is it that calls out to me, " O ingrate 
son ! where is the filial affection, the respect, the obedience, the sup- 
port that is my due? Unnatural, seditious, and rebellious child, a 
dungeon shall punish your crime ! " I look in the face of my accuser, 
who thus holds me to the duty of a son. I turn to see if there I can 
recognize the features of that mother, whom indeed I love, my own 
dear Ireland. I look into that accusing face, and there I see a scowl, 
and not a smile. I miss the soft, fond voice, the tender clasp, the 
loving word. I look upon the hands reached out to gi-asp me — to 
punish me ; and lo ! great stains, blood-red, upon those hands ; and 



A. M. SULLIVAN. 855 

my sad heart tells me it is the blood of my widowed mother, Ireland. 
Then I answer to my accuser : " You have no claim on me ; on my 
love, my duty, my allegiance. You are not my mother. You sit 
indeed in the place where she should reign. You wear the regal 
garments torn from her limbs, while she now sits in the dust, un- 
crowned and overthrown, and bleeding from many a wound. But 
my heart is with her still. Her claim alone is recognized by me. 
She still commands my love, my duty, my allegiance ; and whatever 
the penalty may be, be it pi-ison, chains, be it exile or death, to her 
I will be true." [Applause.] But, gentlemen of the jury, what is 
that Irish nation to which my allegiance turns? Do I thereby mean 
a party, or a class or creed? Do I mean only those who think and 
feel as I do on public questions? Oh, no. It is the whole people 
of this land ; the nobles, the peasants, the clergy, the merchants, the 
gentry, the traders, the professions, the Catholic, the Protestant, 
the Dissenter. Yes, I am loyal to all that a good and patriotic citi- 
zen should be loyal to ; I am ready, not merely to obey, but to sup- 
port with heartfelt allegiance, the constitution of my own country — 
the Queen, as Queen of Ireland, and the fi-ee parliament of Ireland 
once more reconstituted in our national senate-house in College-green. 
And reconstituted once more it will be. In that hour the laws will 
again be reconciled with the national feeling and popular reverence. 
In that hour there will be no more disesteem, or hatred, or contempt 
for the laws : for, howsoever a people may dislike and resent laws 
imposed upon them against their will by a subjugating power, no 
nation disesteems the laws of its own making. That day, that 
blessed day, of peace and reconciliation, and joy, and liberty, I hope 
to see. And when it comes, as conie it will, in that hour it will be 
remembered for me that I stood hci'c to face the trying ordeal, ready 
to suffer for my country ; walking with bared feet over red-hot 
ploughshares like the victims of old. Yes; in that day it will be 
remembered for me, though a prison awaits me now, that I was one 
of those journalists of the people who, through constant sacrifice and 
self-jmmolation, fought the battle of the people, and won eveiy ves- 
tige of liberty remaining in the land. [As INIr. Sullivan resumed 
his seat, the entire audience burst into applause, again and again re- 
newed, despite all efforts at repression.] 



SPEECH 



^w-*.^ \ 









Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 



[857] 




HON. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 



Speech 

In the House of Commons, in Opposition to Pitt's First 
Income Tax. 



WISE man, sir, it is said, should doubt of everything. It 
was this maxim, probably, that dictated the amiable diffi- 
dence of the learned gentleman,* who addressed himself to 
the chair in these remarkable words : "I rise, Mr. Speaker, 
if I have risen." Now, to remove all doubts, I can assure the 
learned gentlemanf that he actually did rise ; and not only rose, but 
pronounced an able, long, and elaborate discourse, a considerable 
portion of which was employed in an erudite dissertation on the 
histories of Rome and Carthage. He further informed the House, 
ui:)on the authority of Scipio, that we could never conquer the 
enemy until we were first conquered oui'selves. It was when Han- 
nibal was at the gates of Rome, that Scipio had thought the proper 
moment for the invasion of Carthage, — what a pity it is that the 
learned gentleman does not go with this consolation and the 
authority of Scipio to the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of 
London! Let him say, "Rejoice, my friends! Bonaparte is 
encamped at Blackheath ! What happy tidings ! " For here Scipio 
tells us, you may every moment expect to hear of Lord Hawkes- 
bury making his triumphal entry into Paris. | It would be vvhiui- 
sical to observe how they would receive such joyful news. I should 
like to see such faces as they would make on that occasion. Though 

* Dr. Lawrence. 

t Mr. Perceval, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, and. In 1809, Prime 
Minister. He was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, May U, 
1812, by a man named Bellingham. 

X Alludes to a boast of his lordship, at an early period of the war against France. 

(859) 



860 TREASURr OF ]-:loquence. 

I doubt not of the erudition of the learned gentleman, he seems to 
me to have somehow eonfounded the stories of Hanno and Hanni- 
bal, of Scipio and the Romans. He told us that Carthage was lost 
by the parsimony or envy of Haimo, in preventing the necessary 
supplies for the war being sent to Hannibal ; but he neglected to go 
a little furlher, and to relate that Hanno accused the latter of having^ 
been ambitious — 

" Jiiveuum furentem cupidine regni ; " 

and assured the senate that Hannibal, though at the gates of Rome, 
was no less dangerous to Hanno. Be this, however, as it may, is 
there any Hanno in the British senate? If there is, nothing can be 
more certain than that all the efl'orts and remonstrances of the- 
British Hanno could not prevent a single man, or a single guinea, 
being sent for the supply of any Hannibal our ministers might 
choose. The learned gcntlen)an added, after the defeat of Hanni- 
bal, Hanno laughed at the senate ; but he did not tell us what he 
laughed at. The advice of Hannibal has all the appearance of being 
a good one : — 

" Carthagiuis nioBnia Roma; raunerata." 

If they did not follow his advice, they had themselves to blame 
for it. 

From the strain of declamation in which the learned gentleman 
launched out, it seems as if he came to this House as executor to a 
man whose genius was scarcely equalled Ijy the eccentricities he 
sometimes indulged. He appears to come as executor, and in the 
House of Commons, to administer to Mr. Burke's fury without any 
of his fire. It is, however, in vain for him to attempt any imitatioa 
of those declamatory harangues and Avritings of the transcendent 
author, which, towards the latter part of his life, were, as I think, 
unfoi'tunately too much applauded. When not embellished with 
those ornaments which Mr. Burke was so capable of adding to all 
he either spoke or wrote, the iul)ject of such declamations could 
only claim the admiration of a school-boy. The circumstance of a 
great, extensive and victorious republic, breathing nothing but war 
in the long exercise of its most successful operations, surrounded 
■with triumphs, and panting for fresh laurels, to be compared, much 



R. B. SHERIDAN. QQl 

less represented as inferior, to the military power of England, is 
childish and ridiculous. What similitude is there between us and 
the great Roman republic in the height of its fame and glory? Did 
you, sir, ever hear it slated, that the Roman bulwark was a naval 
force? And if not, what comparison can there he drawn betweea 
their efforts and power? This kind of rhodomontade declamation 
is finely described in the language of one of the Roman poets — 

" I Clemens, curre per Alpes, 
XJt pueris placcas, et declajiatio fias." * 

JuvEXAL, Sat. X., 1G6. 

The proper ground, sir, upon which this bill should bo opposed, 
I conceive to be neither the uncertainty of the criterion, nor the 
injustice of the retro^^pect, though they would be sufficient. The 
tax itself will be found to defeat its own purposes. The amount 
•which an individual paid to the assessed taxes last year can be no rule 
for what he shall pay in future. All the articles by which the gi'a- 
dations rose must be laid aside, and never resumed again. Circum- 
stanced as the country is, there can be no hope, no chance whatever, 
that, if the tax succeeds, it ever will be repealed. Each individual, 
therefore, instead of putting down this article or that, will make a 
final and general retrenchment ; so that the minister cannot get at 
bim in the same way again, by any outward sign which nn'ght be 
used as a criterion of his wealth. These retrenchments cannot fail 
of depriving thousands of their bread ; and it is vain to hold out 
the delusion of modification or indemnity to the lower orders. 
Every burthen imposed upon the rich in the articles which give the 
poor employment, affects them not the less for affecting them cir- 
cuitously. A coachmaker, for instance, would willingly compromise 
with the minister, to give him a hundred guineas not to lay the tax 
upon coaches ; for though the hundred guineas would be much more 
than his proportion of the new tax, yet it would be much better for 
him to pay the larger contribution, than, by the la^'ing down of 
coaches, be deprived of those orders by which he got his bread. 
The same is the case with watchmakers, which I had lately an oppor- 
tunity of witnessing, who, by the tax imposed last year, are reduced 

* Go, fight, to please school-boy statesmen, and furnish a declamation for a 
Doctor, learned in the law. 



862 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

to a state of ruin, starvation, and misery ; yet, in jiroposing that 
tax, the minister alleged, that the poor journeymen could not be 
affected, as the tax would only operate on the gentlemen by whom 
the watches were worn. It is as much cant, therefore, to say, that 
by bearing heavily on the rich, wc are saving the lower orders, as it is- 
folly to suppose we can come at real income by arbitrary assessment, 
or by symptoms of opulence. There are three ways of raising large 
sums of money in a State : First, by voluntary contributions ; sec- 
ondly, by a great addition of new taxes ; and thirdly, by forced 
contributions, which is the worst of all, and which I aver the pres- 
ent plan to be. I am at present so partial to the fii'st mode, that I 
recommend the further consideration of this measure to be postponed 
for a month, in order to make an experiment of what might be 
effected by it. For this purpose let a bill be brought in, authorizing 
the proper persons to receive voluntary contributions ; and I should 
not care if it were read a third time to-night.' I confess, however, 
that there are many powerful reasons which forbid us to be too san- 
guine in the success even of this measure. To awaken a spirit in 
the nation, the example should come from the first authority, and 
the higher departments of the State. It is, indeed, seriously to be 
lamented, that whatever may be the burdens or distresses of the 
people, the government has hitherto never shown a disposition to con- 
tribute anything ; and this conduct must hold out a poor encourage- 
ment to others. Heretofore all the public contributions were made 
for the benefit and profit of the contributors, in a manner inconceivable 
to more simple nations. If a native inhabitant of Bengal or China 
were to be informed, that in the west of Europe there was a small 
island, which in the course of one hundred years contributed four 
hundred and fifty millions to the exigencies of the State, and that 
every individual, on the making of a demand, vied with his neighbor 
in alacrity to subscribe, he would immediatel}' exclaim, "Magnani- 
mous nation ! you must surely be invincible." But far different 
would be his sentiments, if informed of the tricks and jobs attend- 
ing these transactions, where even loyalty was seen cringing for its 
bonus ! If the first example were given from the highest authority, 
there would at least be some hopes of its being followed by other 
great men, who received largo revenues from the government. I 
would instance particularly the teller of the exchequer, and another 



R. B. SHERIDAN. 8(33 

person of high rank, who receive from their offices £13,000 a yeiw 
more in ^yar than they do in peace. The last noble lord (Lord 
Grenville) had openly declared for perpetual war, and could not 
bring his mind to think of anything like a peace with the French. 
Without meaning any personal disrespect, it was the nature of the 
human mind to receive a bias from such circumstances. So niucli 
was this acknowledged in the rules of this House, that any person 
receiving a pension or high employment from his Majesty, thereby 
vacated his seat. It was not, therefore, unreasonable to expect that 
the noble lord would contribute his proportion, and that a consider- 
able one, to carry on the war, in order to show the world his freedom 
from such a bias. In respect to a near relative of that noble lord, I 
mean the noble marquis (Marquis of Buckingham), there could be 
no doubt of his coming forward liberally. 

I remember, when I was Secretary to the Treasury, the noble 
marquis sent a letter there, requesting that his office might, in point 
of fees and emoluments, be put under the same economical regula- 
tions as the others. The reason he assigned for it was, "the 
emoluments were so much greater in time of war than peace, 
that his conscience would be hurt by feeling that he received them 
from the distresses of his country." No retrenchment, however, 
took place in that office. If, therefore, the marquis thouglit proper 
to bring the arrears since that time also from his conscience, the 
public would be at least £40,000 the better for it. By a calcu- 
lation I have made, which I believe cannot be controverted, it 
appears, from the vast increase of our burdens during the war, that 
if peace were to be concluded to-morrow, we sh(juld have to pi'ovide 
taxes annually to the amount of £28,000,000. To this is further to 
be added, the expense of that system, by which Ireland is not gov- 
erned, but ground, insulted, and oppressed. To find a remedy fur 
all these incumbrances, the first thing to be done is, to restore the 
credit of the bank, which has failed, as well in credit as in honor. 
Let it no longer, in the minister's hands, remain the slave of politi- 
cal circumstances. It must continue insolvent till the connection is 
broken ofi". I remember, in consequence of expressions made use of 
in this House, upon former discussions, when it was thought the 
minister would relinquish that unnatural and ruinous alliance, the 
newspapers sported a good deal with the idea that the House of 



SGi TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Commons bad forbid the bans between him and the old lady.* Her 
friends had interfered, it was said, to prevent the union, as it was 
•U'cU known that it was her dower he sought, and not her person nor 
the charms of her society. The old lady herself, however, when 
wooed, was quickly won, and nothing could be more indelicate than 
to observe her soon afterwards ogling her swain, and wantonly court- 
ing that violence she at first com25lained of. In the first instance it 
might be no more than a case of seduction ; but from her subse- 
quent conduct, it became arrant prostitution 

" I swear I could not see the clear betrayer 
Kneel at my feet, and sigh to be forgiven ; 
But my relenting heart would pardon all, 
And quite forget 'twas ho that had undone me." 

It is, sir, highly offensive to the decency and sense of a commer- 
cial people, to observe the juggle, between the minister and the 
Bank. The latter vauntingly boasted itself ready and able to pay ; 
but that the minister kindly prevented, and put a lock and key upon 
it. There is a liberality in the British nation which always makes 
allowance for inability of payment. Commerce requires enterprise, 
and enterprise is subject to losses. But I believe no indulgence was 
ever shown to a creditor, saying, "I can, but will not pay you." 
Such was the real condition of the Bank, together with its accounts, 
when they were laid before tlic House of Commons ; and the chair- 
manf reported from the committee, staling its prosperity, and the 
great increase of its cash and bullion. The minister, however, took 
care to verify the old saying, " Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is 
better." "Ah!" said he, "my worthy chairman, this is excellent 
news, but I will take care to secure it." He kept his word, took 
the money, gave exchequer bills for it, which were no security, and 
there was then an end to all our public credit. It is singular 
enough, sir, that the report upon this bill stated that it was meant 
to secure our public credit from the avowed intentions of the French 
to make war upon it. This was done most effectually. Let the 
French come when they please, they cannot touch our public credit 

* " Old lady of Threadneedle Street," is In England a common expression to mean 
the Bank of England. 

t Mr. Bragge was chairman of the Committee, and this gave Sheridan the liint 
Tor his punning allusion. 



R. B. SHERIDAN. 865 

at least. The minister has wisely provided against it, for he has 
previously destroyed it. The only consolation besides that remains 
to us, is his assurance that all will return again to its former state at 
the conclusion of the war. Thus we are to hope, that though Ihe 
Bank now presents a meagre spectre, as soon as peace is restored, 
the golden bust will make its reappearance. This, however, is far 
from being the way to inspii'it the nation or intimidate the enemy. 
Ministers have long taught the people of the inferior order, that 
they can expect nothing from them but by coercion, and nothing 
from the great but by corruption. The highest encouragement to 
the French will be to observe the public supineness. Can they have 
any apprehension of national energy or spirit in a people whose 
minister is eternally oppressing them? 

Though, sir, I have opposed the present tax, I am still conscious 
that our existing situation requires great sacrifices to be made, and 
that a foreign enemy must at all events be resisted. I behold in the 
measures of the minister nothing except the most glaring incapacity, 
and the most determined hostility to our liberties ; but we must be 
content, if necessary for preserving our independence from foreign 
attack, to strip to the skin. " It is an established maxim," we are 
told, "that men must give up a part for the preservation of the re- 
mainder." I do not dispute the justice of the maxim. But this is 
the constant language of the gentleman opposite to me. We have 
already given up part after part, nearly till the whole is swallowed 
up. If I had a pound, and a person asked me for a shilling, to 
preserve the rest I should willingly comply, and think myself 
obliged to him. But if he repeated that demand till he cam© to 
my twentieth shilling, I should ask him, " Where is the re- 
mainder? Where is my pound now? Why, my friend, that is 
no joke at all." Upon the whole, sir, I see no salvation for the 
country but in the conclusion of a peace, and the removal of the 
present ministers. 



ADDRESS. 



Robert Emmet, -- -.a. v\ \ 



[867] 



Powerful Address of Robert Emmet, 

Deliveked at his Trial before Lord Norburt, Sept. 19, 1803. 



^^Fp^Y Lords — I am asked what have I to say -why sentence of 
^V.k^ death should not be pronounced on me, accoixling to law. 
if,, J jj I have nothing to say tliat can alter your predetermhiation, 
'V' nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the 
mitigation of that sentence which you arc to pronounce, and I must 
abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, 
and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say why 
my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation 
and calumny which has been cast upon it. I do not imagine that, 
seated where you are, your mind can be so free from prejudice as to 
receive the least impression from Avhat I am going to utter. I have 
no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a coui't 
constituted and trammelled as this is. I only wish, and that is the 
utmost that I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down 
your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it 
finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storms by 
which it is bufi'eted. Was I only to suffer death, after being ad- 
judged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet 
the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the 
law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the 
ministry of the law, labor in its own vindication to consign my char- 
acter to obloquy ; for there must be guilt somewhere ; whether in 
the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, time must deter- 
mine. A man in my situation has not only to encounter the diflicul- 
ties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has 
corrupted or subjugated, but the difEculties of established prejudice. 



(8C9) 



870 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, 
that it may live in (he respect of my countrymen, I seize upun this 
opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged 
against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port 
— when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred he- 
roes who have shed their blood on the scafi'old and in the field in the 
defence of their country and of virtue, this is my hope — I wish that 
my memory and my name may animate those who survive me, while 
I look down M'ith complacency on the destruction of that perfidious 
government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the 
Most High — which displays its power overman, as over the l)easts 
of the forest — which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, 
in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or 
doubts a little more or a little less than the government standard — 
a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the or- 
phans and the tears of the widows it has made. 

Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Emmet, saying, " tliat the mean and wicked 
entliusiasts who felt as he did, were not equal to the accomplishment of their wild 
•designs." 

I appeal to the immaculate God — I swear by the throne of 
Heaven, before which I must shortly appear — by the blood of the 
murdered patriots who have gone before me — that my conduct has 
beeu, through all this peril, and through all my purposes, governed 
only by the conviction which I have uttered, and by no other view 
than that of the emancipation of my country from the supcriulunnan 
oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed ; 
and I confidently hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, 
there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish (his noblest 
of enterprises. Of this I speak with confidence of intimate knowl- 
edge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. 
Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving 
you a transitoiy uneasiness. A man who never yet raised his voice 
to assert a lie, will not hazard his character with posterity by assert- 
ing a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an 
occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man who does not wish to have 
his epitaph written until his countrj' is liberated, will not leave a 
weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence to impeach the probity 



ROBERT EMMET. 871 

"which he means to preserve, even in the grave to which tyranny con- 
signs him. 

Here he was again interrupted by tlie court. 

Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your 
lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy — my 
expressions were for my countrymen. If there is a true Irishman 
present let my last words cheer liim in the hour of his afiliction. 

Here lie was again interrupted. Lord Norbury said he did not sit there to hear 
treason. 

I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a 
prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. 
I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to 
bear with patience and to speak with humanity ; to exhort the victim 
of the laws, and to ofler, with tender benignity, their opinions of 
the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he was 
adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have 
done, I have no doubt ; but where is the boasted freedom of your 
institutions — Avhere is the vaunted impartiality, clemency and mild- 
ness of your courts of justice, if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your 
policy, and not justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the 
executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and 
truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated? 
My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a 
man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold ; 
but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold's terrors, 
would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have 
been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge; I 
am the supposed culprit. I am a man ; you are a man also. THy a 
revolution of power we might change places, though we never could 
change characters. If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not 
vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice ! If I stand at 
this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calum- 
niate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy 
inflicts on my body, condemn my tongue to silence and my reputa- 
tion to reproach ? Your executioner may abridge the period of ray 
■existence ; but while I exist, 1 shall not forbear to vindicate my 



872 TREASUllY OF ELOQUENCE. 

character and motives from your aspersions ; and, as a man, to whom 
ftime is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing 
•justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the 
only legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and forAvhom I am. 
jDroud to perish. As men, my lords, we must appear on the great 
day at one common tribunal ; and it will then remain for the Searcher 
of all Hearts to show a collective universe, who was engaged in the 
most virtuous actions, or swayed hy the purest motive — my coun- 
try's oppressors, or — 

Here he was internipted, and told to listen to the sentence of the law. 

My lords, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of excul- 
pating himself in the eyes of the community from an undeserved 
reproach, thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with 
ambition, and attempting to cast away for a paltry consideration the 
liberties of his country? Why did your lordships insult me? Or 
rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of 
death should not be pronounced against me ? I know, my lords, that 
form prescribes that you should ask the question. The form also 
presents tiie right of answering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed 
with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence 
was alread}^ pronounced at the Castle before the jury were empan- 
elled. Your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I insist 
on the whole of the forms. 

Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed. 

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of 
France ! and for what end ? It is alleged that I wish to sell tlie 
independence of my country ; and for what end ? Was this the 
object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal 
of justice reconciles conti-adiction? No ; I am no emissary ; and my 
ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country, 
not in power nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. 
Sell my country's independence to Franco! and for what? Was it 
a change of masters? No, but for ambition. Oh, my country ! was 
it pers(mal ambition that could influence me? Had it been the soul 
of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the 



ROBERT EMMET. 873 

rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself amongst 
the proudest of your oppressors ? M}' country was my idol ! To it 
I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I 
now offer up myself, O God ! No, my loi'ds ; I acted as an Irish- 
man, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign 
and unrelenting tyranny, and the more galling yoke of a domestic 
faction, which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the patricide, 
from the ignominy existing with an exterior of splendor and a con- 
scious depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my coun- 
try from this doubly riveted despotism — I wished to place her 
independence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to 
exalt her to that proud station in the world. Connection with 
France was, indeed, intended, but only as far as mutual interest 
would sanction or require. Wei-e the French to assume any author- 
ity inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal 
for their destructiou. We sought their aid — and we sought it as 
we had assurance we should obtain it — as auxiliaries in war, and 
allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, 
uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the 
utmost of my strength. Yes ! my countrymen, I should advise j^ou 
to meet them upon the beach with a sword in one hand, and a torch 
in the other. I would meet them with all the destructive fury of 
war. I would animate my countr^'men to immolate them in their 
boats, before they had contaminated the soil of my country. If they 
succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior dis- 
cipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, burn every blade of 
grass, and the last entrenchment of liljerty should be my grave. 
What I could not do myself, if I should fall, I should leave as a last 
cliarge to my countrymen to accomplish ; because I should feel con- 
scious that life, any more than death, is unprofitable when a foreign 
nation holds my country in subjection. But it was not as an enemy 
that the succors of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the 
assistance of France ; but I wished to prove to France and to the 
wcu'ld that Irishmen deserved to be assisted ; that they were indig- 
nant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of 
their country; I wished to procure for my country the guarantee 
which Washington procured for America ; to procure an aid which, 
by its example, would be as important as its valor ; disciplined, gal- 



874 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

lant, pregnant with science and experience ; tlmt of a people who 
"would perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our charac- 
ter. They would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, 
after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were 
my objects : not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. 
It was for these ends I sought aid from France ; because France, 
even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy 
already in the bosom of my country. 

Here lie was iutenniptcd b}' the court. 

I have been charged with that importance in the emancipation of 
my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of 
Irishmen; or, as your lordship expressed it, "the life and l>lood of 
the conspiracy." You do me honor over much : you have given 
to the subaltein all the credit of a superior. There are men en- 
gaged in this conspiracy w^ho are not only superior to me, but even 
to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord — men before the 
splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respect- 
ful deference, and who would think themselves disgraced by shaking 
your blood-stained hand. 

Here be was interrupted. 

What, my lord, shall yon tell me, on the passage to the scaf- 
fold, which that tyranny (of wliich you are only the intermediary 
executioner) has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for 
all the blood that has and will be shed in this struggle of the op- 
pi'essed against the oppressor — shall you tell me this, and must I 
be so very a slave as not to repel it? I do not fear to approach the 
Omnipotent Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life ; and 
am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality 
here? By you, too, although, if it were possible to collect all the 
innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry in 
one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it. 

Here the judge interfered. 



EGBERT EMMET. , 875 

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; 
let no man attaint my memory, by believing that I could have en- 
gaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and indepen- 
dence ; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power, in 
the oppression and misery of my country. The pi'oclamation of the 
Provisional Government speaks for our views ; no inference can be 
tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or 
subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not 
have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I 
would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor. In the dignity of 
freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, 
and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. 
And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected 
myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and 
the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, 
and my country her independence, — am I to be loaded with cal- 
umny, and not suflered to resent it? No ; God forbid ! 

Hero Lord Norbury told Mr. Emmet that his sentiments and language disgraced 
his family and his education, but more particularly his father, Dr. Emmet, who was 
a man, if alive, that would not countenance such opinions. To which Mr. Emmet 
replied : — 

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns 
and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, O 
ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father ! look down 
■with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I 
have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality 
and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful 
mind, and for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, 
you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is 
not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim — 
it circulates warmly and unrufllcd through the chaimels which God 
created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent to destroy 
for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient ! 
I have but a few more words to say — I am going to my cold and 
silent grave — my lamp of life is nearly extinguished — my race is 
run — the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I 



876 



TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 



have but one request to aak at my departure from this world : it 
is — THE CHAKiTY OF ITS SILENCE. Let 110 man write my epitaph; 
for, as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let 
not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in 
obscurity and peace ; and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my 
memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice 
to my character. When my country takes her place among the 
nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be 
written. I have done. 




ADDRESS, 



-X-.,. 



^^ 






Michael Davitt, 



[ 877 ] 



Future Policy of Irish Nationalists. 



The following masterly address on the " Future Policy of Irish Nationalists," 
■wliid) lie delivered in Mechanic's Hall, Boston, on December 8, 1878, before his 
departure for Ireland, being his first great efl'ort in oratory, and a clear exposition 
of the reasons for unity of action amongst all classes of Irishmen, we give in 
full : — 



^«T would be diiBcult to conceive a position more unenviable than 
^1 that in which an Irish Nationalist places himself when he 
f"- attempts to review the past of his party in order to point out 
•L what be believes to have been rash or impolitic in its career. 
A criticism of the wisdom of an action that has failed or a line of 
conduct which has been injudicious, is at once construed into dis- 
loyalty to the principles or party which may have prompted such 
action by a sincere but imprudent resolve. But when ho expresses 
himself dissatisfied with the narrow sphere of a policy Avhich tends 
to exclude from National labor every one but a pronounced Separa- 
tist, and adds his belief that a change of tactics would turn the 
exertions of sincere Irishmen, though now pronounced Separatists, 
into the National cause, he is at once assumed to have "forfeited his 
principles," and to be on the high road to AVcst-Britonisni. 

In consequence of this proncness of the Irish mind to hasty and 
uncharitable deductions, men (who t/tink while working in Ireland's 
cause) are deterred from condemning what they know to be inju- 
dicious, lest they should find themselves ostracized from its ranks 
for their anxiety to see it directed the surest way to success. In 
my humble opinion, a want of moral courage belittles a man far 
more than a deficiency in the physical article, and that real coward- 
ice consists in dreading the sentimental consequences of an upright, 
honest action. It has ever been the practice to pander to the popu- 
lar prejudices of our country, by hyperbolical eulogies on everything 



880 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Irisli, and wc have thus become tlie spoiled childvcn of struggling 
nationalities, and, as a necessary consequence, backward in our 
political education as a people, as well as behind the progressive 
march of the age. Holding these opinions, I will endeavor to-night 
to show you how we ourselves are to blame for past failures, and 
how essential it is, that the causes which led to such failures be 
guarded against in the future. The indestructibility of Irish nation- 
ality is no more its distinguishing characteristic, than is its past 
inapplicability to the working out of its own success, or the winning 
of an advanced social and political position for the people who pro- 
fess it. We can boast that hundreds of years of the worst rule that 
ever cursed a country has failed to crush it ; but can we say that 
Ireland is to-day in a condition connnensurate with the struggles 
and sacrifices of her sons on her behalf during the past seven cen- 
turies? I think not ; and the "why and wherefore " of this fact is 
what should ibcus upon it the thought and studies of practical 
Nationalists of the present. That there has been an unmethodical 
application of energies, or rather, a reckless waste of national 
strength in this long contest, is but too patent from a comparison 
between the position, social and political, of our country to-day, 
and that of other peoples who have struggled successfully against 
the same enemy. The very strength of our purpose and determina- 
tion of our resolves were the means which invited defeat. We 
grasped at liberty in the intoxication of sincerity, and blindly dis- 
carded every other practical consideration. We " resolved," and 
" swore," and "determined" to avenge Ireland's lorongsl but took no 
essential method to win her liberty. We were actuated as much 
by revenge as by patriotism, and received the penalty which follows 
the obeying of a passion instead of the dictates of a virtue. While 
recognizing that it was a war of races, Saxon against Celtic, we 
refused to shelter ourselves behind the ramparts of expediency or 
employ any of the many justifiable means by which a weak people 
might utilize their strength ; and we therefore marched into the 
open i)lain inviting destruction. Instead of watching our enemy 
from l)ehind the Torres Vedras of Ireland's imperishable national 
principles, and determining our action by his weakness or strength 
according to the powers arrayed against him, we left our position 
exposed in order to challenge him to single combat, and we never 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 881 

xaarcbed t<j the Paris of the British Empire to see him relinquish his 
spoils or surrender his conquests. 

No greater mistake could be made by Fenianism than the draw- 
ing of but a single line of distinction between a West Briton and the 
Irishman wlio accepted its programme of actinn as the safe, cei-tain, 
and only means of winning independence. The assumption that all 
Irish Nationalists were included in the Feniiui organization was a 
piece of disastrous folly, as it engendered a bitter hostility to earnest 
Irishmen who only refused to follow a leader whom they did not 
know in a movement which confined itself to a single class of their 
countrymen. Thus, a host of enemies were created where the 
reserve force of a real national movement should find strength and 
support. 

Now, a fault-finder or critic has no claim to a fair hearing, unless 
he has something i-easonable to sulistitiite for or amend in what he 
condemns. I will, therefore, with your iiididgence, attempt to 
23oint out what, in my opinion, would place our national cause upon 
■a stronger footing, and multiply its chances of success in the near 
future. 

As I have freely censured the past policy of my own party, it 
may have created a suspicion in. your minds that it was the part!/ 
itself or its principles which I attacked under cover of a review of 
its past history. I trust it will not need my assurance to convince 
you of my belief in and adherence to the doctrine of physical force, 
tmd that wliatever other agencies, expedient, moral, or diplomatic, 
T\'hich I ma}' desire to see added to the factors at work in the 
national Ciuise, I am convinced, that it is only the manhood strength 
•of Ireland which can give the coxip-de-grace to her enemy's rule 
over her. This belief does not exclude the employment of any of 
the other means I have just alluded to as an auxiliary to the final 
(/enuer res.sorl as being unjustifiable or antagonistic to the principles 
involved in the contest; and it is on this ground I rest a claim for 
tin; utilizing of every safe and justifiable expedient in the working 
out of our country's social and political redemption. It is well, 
tlierefore, to look outside the National party in Ireland, to recon- 
noitre our friends or enemies, and see how far the one can be count- 
■ed upon and how much the other is to be dreaded. 

The Ireland of the present may be divided into four distinct 



882 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

sections of political strife, presumably in her interest: the Nation- 
alist or party of action. "National "Constitutional, West British, and 
neutral, or rather non-participant, Irishmen. 

Take the first of these parties, which, on account of its being the 
custotlian of Ireland's non-forfeited right to independence, should 
necessarily be the most powerful in numbers and inlluenco ; yet we 
must admit that it is not so, when it is looked at either in the light 
of its recent past endeavors or from its present hold on the public 
mind of Ireland. But let it be disassociated from the consequences 
of sincere but injudicious or premature action, and pitted against 
anti-national feeling in Ireland, and it possesses at once the imques- 
tioned representative sentiment of the Irish people, and outnumbei-s 
in its adherents all the other parties combined. The position which 
we occupy in the political world is, therefore, a singularly anomal- 
ous one ; for while our people are unquestionably national in their 
inward convictions, they exhibit in their external or public aspect a 
contradiction to that very fact. Hence the world either misunder- 
stands or discredits our political aspirations. Now how is it that 
the Nationalist party is numerically the strongest in sentiment and 
sympathy, Avhilc not so in action? And wh3' does external opinion 
remain sceptical as to Ireland's real desire for separation? 

To answer the first question, I will crave permission to place my- 
self in the position of a tiller of tlie soil in Ireland, — say one of 
Patten Bridge's victims, on the barren slopes of the Galtces. I will 
assume I have just reached the level of my mud-walled cabin, on 
the mountain side, after carrying a load of manure on my back from 
the plains below. I have seen the short-horns, and black-faced 
sheep, from England and Scotland, grazing upon the rich land ait 
the foot of the mountains, — the land w-iiich formerly belonged to 
my ancestors, and the produce of which is now fattening brute 
beasts while my six children arc starving with hunger. I might be 
supposed to say, " How is it that I, who have done no wrong to 
God, my country, or s;)ciety, should be doomed to a penal existence 
like this? Who are they that stand by and see the beasts of the 
field preferred before me and my family ? I am powcrle>s to do 
anything but provide for the cravings of those whom God has sent 
to my care, and to relax my labor for a day might be a day's starva- 
tion to my little ones. If I go down to the castle and avenge my 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 883 

■wrongs on the heud of Patten Bridge, I am but injuring him, and 
not the sj'stem which enables him to iDluuder me. I naist therefore 
refrain from an act which would see 7ne die on the scaffold, and ray 
children in the workhonse. If no one else will assist me, I am con- 
dcunicd to tliis miserable existence for the remainder of my life. 
"Who are they that have time and energy to take part in tlio politi- 
cal strife of the day, and say they are working for Ireland and 
me? The Nationalist party tells me that when independence is won, 
I will no longer be at the mercy of an English landlord. That is 
like feeding my children with a mind's-eye-view of the dinner that 
will Ije served in Galtee Castle to-day. Yellow meal porridge is a 
more substantial meal than visionary plenty, and if the Nationalists 
want me to believe in, and labor a little for, independence, they 
must first show themselves desirous and strong enough to Kland be- 
tween me and (he power which a single En'jlisliman wields over me. 
If they show ihey can do that, and thereby better my condition, 
they will convince me of their strength in Ireland, aud earnestness 
in my behalf; and it is not in Irish nature to refuse a helping hand 
to those who assist another. Let them show that the social well- 
being of our people is the motive of their actions, and aim of their 
endeavors, while striving for the grand object ahead, and then the 
farming classes in Ireland will rally round them to assist in reaching 
that object. They look upon a man's existence in an absti'act light, 
and think he should be moved in their cause without consulting th;it 
selfishness which is invariably the mainspring of human actions. 
God only knows how much I would like to fight for Ireland to- 
morrow if I could only see a chance of success, or had my wife and 
children in a similar position to that in which I am told the farmers 
of France and Belgium have theirs; but every former attempt at 
success has failed, me and mine are still at the mercy of liie land- 
lord, and therefore I can only give the Nationalists my sympathy 
and well-wishes, for my labor, time, and life, is necessary to the 
feeding of little Nora and the other children. The Parliamentarians 
promise to do more for me than any other party, but tliey break 
their promises in Westminster, and show as great an interest in 
Turkey as in Ireland. They are also at war with the Nationalists, 
and consequently the government and the West Britons ha\c it all 
their own Avay over the vast majority of tlie Irish people, ile and 



884 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

the likes of me are told we have friends in all parties ; but we never 
iire made to feel anything but the power and influence of our ene- 
mies, — the landlords. I must bring up another creel of dung from 
the bottom of the mountain before mid-day, and then share my 
bowl of stirabout with my little ones. God's will be done, but it 
is a hard life to lead in the nineteenth century ! " 

This is no exaggeration of tiic thoughts or attitude of the people 
who arc compelled to stand aloof from political strife in Ireland ; 
and this vast class, recruited alike from the one instanced as well as 
from all those whose avocations and actions have their root in the 
virtue of the hoiiefit, seljixli carets of social life, are within reach of 
the party of action, if the necessary steps are taken to enlist their 
assistance and co-operation. 

Turning to the political aspect of Irish nationality as it is viewed 
from abroad, it is easy to show how we have been, and are still, 
discredited with practical earnestness in our opposition to English 
rule. We have flattered ourselves too long with the belief that we 
were assured of French and American sympathy in our contest with 
the enemy of our race, and that these and other countries would 
acctptof our spasmodic struggles against a dominant power as prov- 
ing the disafl'ection and determined opposition of a whole people, 
while "representatives," municipalities, I'eligious and other bodies, 
public men and public writers, were convincing them to the direct 
contrary. 'Tis true that periodical attempts at insurrection have 
shown that though our country is subjugated it is not reconciled to 
alien government, willing to forfeit its national birthright ; but, con- 
vincing as all this may bo to Irishmen, others will look upon our 
repeated' risings in the light of past events, and speak of them in 
proportion to their importance as looked at from an external point 
of view, while weighing us in the political balance of nationalities 
in exact accordance with the public spirit and political tendencies of 
our people of the present. The collective opinions of foreign na- 
tions, in sympathy with or indifl'erence towards the Irish question, 
will be formed from its present phases, and not, as toe would desire, 
from past occurrences ; and therefore the less our national aspirations 
and convincing opposition to alien rule are manifested to the world 
by the public tone and attitude of our people, the less interest there 
will be taken and sympathy felt by the world in our cause. Oiu* 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 885 

couuecttou with the past of Ireland — the inspiration we draw from 
its history, and the events therein recorded — must influence, of 
course, our line of action in the working out of the political destiny 
of our fatherland ; but our glorious past w^il not win for us one iota 
of sympathy from outside the Irish race beyond what is demanded 
hy the consistency of such actions with the object aimed at, and the 
practical manner in which the national desire for the attainment of 
that object is manifested. 

When we appeal to mankind for tlie justice of our cause, we must 
assume the attitude of a united, because an earnest, people, and 
show reason why we refuse to accept of our political annihilation. 
We can only do this by the thoroughness of purpose which should 
actuate, and the sj^stematic exertions which alone can justify, us in 
claiming the recognition due to a country which has never once' 
acquiesced in its subjugation, nor abandoned its resolve to be free. 
Viewing that country then, as she presents herself to-day, the prob- 
lem of her redemption may be put in this formula: Given the present 
social and political condition of Ireland, with vhe spirit, national 
tendencies, physical and moral ftn-ccs of her people — together with 
the power, influence, and policy arrayed against them — to indicate 
what should be the i)lans pursued, and action adopted, ■whereby the 
condition of our people could be materially improved, in eflforts 
tending to raise them to their rightful position as a Nation. 

I confess to th(; difficult}' of solving such a problem, but not so 
much as to the putting it into practice if theoretically demonstrated ; 
but 

" Eight endeavor's not in vniu • — 

Its rew:inl is in tlie doing; 

And the rapture of pursuing, 
Is the prize the vanqiiislied gain." 

Let US see if we can discover a key to the difiiculty of the Irish 
question. I will assume that thei'c are certain matters or contingen- 
cies important to or alfccli ng the Irish race which are of equal in- 
terest to its people (irrespecti\'e of what diircrcnces of opinion there 
may be amongst them on various other concerns), — such as the 
preservation of the distinctive individuality of the race itself among 
peoples ; the earning for it that resjiect and prestige to which 
it is by right and inheritance entitled, by striving for its improve- 



836 TREASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

mcnt, physically ami movall}', and its intellectual and social advance- 
ment, revival of its ancient language, etc; and that there arc past 
occurrences and sectional animosities which all cl;isses must reasona- 
bly desire to prevent in future, for the hoiwr and Avelfare of 
themselves and country, — such as religious feuds and provincial 
antipathies. I will also assume that the raising of our peasant pop- 
ulation from the depths of social misery to which it has been sunk by 
an unjust land system, would meet with the approval of most classes 
in Ireland, and receive the moral co-operatiun of Irishmen aln-oad, 
as would also the improvement of the dwellings of our agricultural 
population, which project, I also assume, would be acccjitcd ai:d sup- 
ported by all parties in Irish political life. AVithout particularizing 
any further measures for the common good of our people, for which 
political parties cannot i-efuse to mutually co-operate, if consistent 
Avith their raison d'efre as striving for their country's welfare, I think 
it will be granted that Nationalists (pronounced or quiescent). Ob- 
structionists, Home Eulers, li-'pealers, and others, could unite in 
ohtaining the reforms already enumerated by concerted action on 
jind by whatever means the present existing state of afi'airs in Ire- 
land can place within their reach. Such concerted action for the 
general good would necessitate a centripetal platform, as represent- 
ing tliat central priucijjle or motive which constitutes the hold and 
supplies the influence that a country's government has upon the peo- 
ple governed. 

A race of people, to preserve itself from destruction by an hostile 
race, or by partisan spirit and factious strife internally, or absorption 
by n people among which it may be scattered, absolutely requires 
some central idea, principle, or platform of motives of action, by 
•which to exercise its national, or race-individuality, strength, with a 
view to its improvement and preservation. A people's own estab- 
lished government supplies this need, of course, but where, as in 
Ireland, there is no government of or by the people, and the domi- 
nant power is but a strong executive faction, the national strength is 
wasted, — 1. By the divide et impera policy of that dominant Eng- 
lish faction ; 2. By desperate attempts to overthrow that power ; 
and 3. By hitherto fruitless agitation to win a just rule, or force 
remedial legislation from an alien assembly by means repugnant to 
the pride of the largest portion of our people ; while here, in this 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 8S7 

great shelter-land of peoples, the Irish race itself is fast disappear- 
ing in the composite American. If, therefore, a platform be put 
fortli embodying' rewistance to every hostile element pitted, or ad- 
verse influence at work, against the individuality of Ireland and its 
people, and a programme of national labor for the general welfare 
of our country I)c adopted, resting upon those wants and desires 
■which have a first claim upon the consideration of Irishmen, — such 
a platform, if put forth, not to suit a particular party, but to em- 
brace all that is earnest and desirous among our people for labor in 
the vineyard of Ireland's common good, a great national desire 
would be gratified, and an immense stride be taken towards the 
goal of each Irishman's hopes. 

Such a centre-composite platform would not necessarily require 
any control over the oi'ganization of its respective party-adherents, 
nor need the resources of the party of action except when the final 
appeal for self-government should be made. All that it would 
tlcmand from its individual elements would be such support as 
should make it superior in influence over the public life of Ire- 
land to that which the English faction wields to our disgrace and 
disadvantage to-day. Apart from the material good which would 
assuredly follow from such a platform being adopted, how inesti- 
mable would be the collateral advantages that would accrue from 
Irishmen adinrf logellier at last for some tangible common benefit to 
\)Q conferred upon themselves and their country ! The gradual but 
certain sweeping away of West-British ideas before the advance of 
11 united national Irish sentiment ; the harmonizing of the hitherto 
conflicting elements in political parties ; the developing of our peo- 
ple's political education; the creation of a healthy and vigorous 
puldic spirit which would at once attract and challenge the attention 
of foreign opinion, and concentrate upon Ireland an international 
interest in a renaissanf people, who can exert a powerful influence 
over the destiny of a declining empire, the prestige and power of 
which arc obnoxious to rival nations. Then the immense impetus 
which would be given to the national cause by the moral suppmt of 
a sympathetic participation in it by the vast Irish and Irish-Ameri- 
can element in this country, by far the greater part of which has 
heretofore stood aloof from Ireland's straggles, in consequence of 



888 TREASURY OF ELOriUENCE. 

having no feasible plan laid liefore it, whereby its assistance and 
influence conkl be profitably employed in the same. 

The difficulties in the way of such an united Irish public move- 
ment :rc to be found in the unreasonable prejudice and suicidal an- 
tagonism which exists between the two parties who each assunn^ to 
bo Ireland's benefactor, — tlio Nationalist and the Irish-Constitu- 
tion:il bodies. This mutual op})osition has weakened both, diflnscd 
b'.id l)io(id among the commuriily, increased the number of non- 
parlicinants in the political life of the country, and sirengthcned the 
position of the coercive faction. Condemnation of Nationalist actiou' 
by Irish Constitutionals is jiermissible only within the limits of a 
censure upon desperate, untimely resolves on insurrection, as their 
opposition is unjustifiable upon any otlicr ground. 

The Nationalist party is the guardian of their country's inalienable 
right to be unstress of her own destinies ; its records are those which 
tell of a nation's fight against the extertninatiou of its people : its 
martyrology is that of Ireland ; and all of which we can justly be 
most proud in her history — her seven centuries' struggle against 
overwhelming odds for the highest ambition of a nation (indepen- 
dence) — is the platform of the party of action. Its very defeats 
have won victories for the Constitutionalists ; and the intensity of 
its earnestness has compelled remedial measures to be conceded to 
Ireland. As the Irishman w ho believes that his country could not 
govern herself if politically isolated is too contem[)tible to be 
noticed, the objection against the Nationalist party by its Consti- 
tutional opponent is belief in the improbability of final success, — 
and not antagonism to the object aimed at. 

On the other side, the prejudice existing among Nationalists 
against Constitutional action is in proporti(ni to the anti-National 
complexion which it assumes ; hence. Home Rule, from its being so 
much more un-Irish in essence and scope, is looked upon with 
greater antipathy than Repeal. Giving the Constitutionals credit, 
as in charity bound, for the best intentions, we must assume that 
they are actuati d by the following reasons and motives : Believ- 
ing in the impossibilit}- of separation, they rely upon moral force as 
a means of advancing the interests of the country, and that they 
employ this means in the conviction that it is the safest and most 
efficient plan by which an improvement of the people can I)e effected. 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 880 

and their country benefited. When the acts of Constitutionals lielie 
these motives, they become reprehensible ; but in their honesty of 
conduct within the lines of their good intents, they are deserxinc: of, 
and entitled to, recognition and tolerance as laborers in behalf of Ire- 
land and its people. They are as prominent in the political arena as 
the Nationalists, — more so, in fact, as the}' have a public policy to 
catch the public ear and eye. They have a following in Ireland 
which is at once powerful and influential, and cannot, therefore, l)e 
ignored. They have enlisted the support of the Catholic c!erg\ , 
and count the middle class of the country as belonging to their 
party. Since the passing of the ballot-bill they can appeal with 
more force to Irish voters, who no longer run the risk of eviction 
for opposing landlord nominees. This freedom from restraint in the 
exercise of the franchise among a remedy-seeking people must logi- 
cally impel them to look for redress, and men to champion their 
cause, in the safest, and, to them, most efiectual means within 
their reach. 

To these facts must bo added still stronger ones, namely, that, 
whether we Nationalists like it or not, Irish voters, as well as non- 
electors, will participate in elections, and interest themselves in tlieir 
results. So long as the infamous Act of Union lasts, men will be 
sent to Westminster to represent or betray their country, in exact 
proportions to the interest or indifference with which the whole Irish 
people look upon Parliamentarianism. An indication of a natinnal 
resolve to minimize the disgrace of a traitor-representation in an hos- 
tile assembly would curb the self-seeking place-hunters in the auc- 
tion of their "patriotism," and themselves in St. Stephen's political 
mart. Hostility towards, or complete isolation from, parliamentary 
action by the Nationalists, will engender and encourage Wrst-Briton- 
ism in Irish representation, and the world, which persists in looking 
at the Irish question through the medium of the House of Commons, 
will form its opinions on the wants and political tendencies of Ire- 
land from the conduct and utterances of her " representatives," 'I he 
amount of national sentiment and hostility to alien rule exhil«ited in 
Westminster by Irish members of Parliament will be to Knssia, 
France, and America the gauge of the same sentiment and hostility 
in Ireland, where such members are elected. With the puMic ear 
in Ireland, and the eye and attention of the world in the world's most 



890 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

conspicuous assembly, how are the Conslilutionalists Jiandicapped in 
a contest for parti/ influence with the Nationalists, who have neither J 
Suppose the positions and advantages reversed in tlie last respect, at 
least, would the Nationalists be weaker and the cause of Ireland 
worse situated? I think not. 

Having defined the relative positions and strength of the two great 
parties in Irish politics, no other conclusion can be come to but this : 
that initil an understanding, base of public union, or common pnl)lic 
platform, is established between them, the Executive faction, alias 
Castle government, will influence, direct, and domineer tlic official 
and public life of Ireland, and her people "may whistle to the ivinds 
for self-government, or escape from the Saxon's control." 

Now let us put prejudices one side and honestl}' look at facts, and 
■we will find that parliamentary action during the past few years has 
been trying to clothe itself in the garb of honesty, notwithstanding 
numerous instances of betrayal of trust. Mr. Isaac Butt, in giving 
a Federal complexion to Ireland's constitutional holiday garment for 
Westminster parade, was endeavoring to make Imperial broadcloth, 
out of Irish frieze, and he has become politically bankrupt, in con- 
sequence of failure. Abstract this disagreeable feature, together 
with the un-Irish conduct and treachery of some of Mr. Butt's sup- 
porters, from the action of Irish members in the House of Commons 
during the past few years, and we will find a more national and de- 
termined stand taken for Ireland and against the government than at 
any former period in that assembly. Seeing this, finding large 
classes of our people boasting of it, and recognizing the fact that 
the centre figui'e of this stubborn attitude in an hostile assembly, 
has, in the small space of four years, become the most popular and 
most trusted of Irishmen, is there not something good can come out 
of Nazareth, after all? If so, let us see how it can bo increased. 

For the present good of Ireland, and as a polic}' of expediency, I, 
as a Nationalist, could support the following programme consistently 
with my own principles and Ireland's present wants : — 

1st. The first and indispensable requisite in a representative of Ireland in the 
Parliament of England to be a public profession of his belief in the inalienable right 
of the Irish people to self-government, and recognition of the fact that the want of 
fielf-govornmcnt is the chief want of Ireland. 

2d. Au exclusive Irish representation, with the view of exhibiting Ireland to the 



MICHAEL DAVITT. S91 

world in the liglit of lipr people's opinions and national aspirations, togctlicr with 
an uncorapromisiug opposition to tlic government upon every prejudiced or coercive 
policy. 

3d. A demand for tlio immediate improvement of the land system by sucli a 
thorough change as would prevent the peasantry of Ireland fronH)eing its victims 
in the future. This change to form tlic preamble of a system of small proprietor- 
ships similar to what at present obtains in France, Belgium and I'rnssia. Such land 
to bo purchased or held directly from tlio state. To ground this demand upon the 
reasonable fact that, as tlie land of Ireland formerly belonged to tlic people (being but 
nominally held in trust for them Ijy cliiefs or heads of clans elected for that among 
other purposes) it is the duty of the government to give compensation to the land- 
lords for taking back that wliicli was bestowed upon their progenitors after being 
stolen from the people, in order that the state can again become the custodian of 
the land for the people-owners. 

4th. Legislation for the encouragement of Irish industries, development of Ire- 
laud's natural resources; substitution, as niueli as practicable, of cultivation for 
grazing; reclamation of waste lands; protection of Irish fisheries, and improve- 
ment of peasant dwellings. 

5th. Assimilation of the county to the borough franchise, and reform of the 
grand jury laws, as also those afl'ecting convention in Ireland. 

Gth. A national solicitude on the question of educatjon by vigorous efforts for 
improving and advancing the same, together with every precaution t.o be taken 
.against it being made an anli-nulional one. 

7th. The right of the Irlsli people to carry arms. 



It will be objected by some, that to meddle in parliamentary 
action, no matter how honest, i.s contrary to Nationalist principles, 
and therefore censurable. No man likes to put his hands in pitch; 
but if he is tarred and feathered for no fault of his own, and against 
his will, he must clean himself as best he can. The pitch of English 
rule on Ireland will not be removed by kid-gloycd indifference and 
straight-laced, lofty patriotic consistency ; it is better to commence 
scrubbing it otT wherever more can be otherwise added. It will bo 
again objected that if a strong National party were sent to Parlia- 
ment, and it succeeded in obtaining some remedial measures, the 
people of Ireland would be contented with what they would thus 
obtain, and cease to strive for separation. Granted that a portion 
of our people would "rest and be thankful " for a better condition 
of affairs than they live under at present ; but would the Nationalist 
party be so? If it would, it is not the real representative of 
Ireland's past ; if it would not, there is no earthly justification for 
an abstention from endeavoring to benefit even those that would 
accept the situation, when side by side with their social and political 



892 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

advancement would be that of those who would not take it as a final 
settlement of the question. 

. It is showing a strange want of knowledge of England's hatred 
and jealousy of Ireland to suppose that a government formed from 
any of the English parties would ever concede all that could satisfy 
the desires of the Irish peojale ; and to ground an apprehension 
upon such an improbable contingency is a mistake. 

Again, the supposition that the spirit of Irish nationality, which 
has combated against destruction for seven centuries, only awaits a 
few concessions from its baffled enemy to be snuifed out thereby, 
does not speak highly for those who hold that opinion of its frailty. 
In my opinion, we may expect to hear no more of " the cause " when 
the genius of Tippei'ary shall carve the Rock of Cashel into a statue 
of Judge Keogh, and Croagh Patrick shall walk to London to ren- 
der homage to the Duke of Connaught. Every chapter of our 
history, eveiy ensanguined field upon which our forefathers died in 
defence of that cause, every name in the martyrology of Ireland, 
from Fitzgerald to Charles McCarthy, proclaim the truth of 
Meagher's impassioned words : " From the Irish mind the inspiring- 
thought that there once was an Irish Nation self-chartered and self- 
ruled can never be effaced ; the burning hope that there will be one 
again can never be extinguished." 

With these convictions, and the consummation of such hopes pre- 
destined by an indestructible cause and imperishable national princi- 
ples, Irish Nationalists can, M'ithout fear of compromising such 
principles, grapple with West-Britonism on its own ground, and 
strangle its efforts to imperialize Ireland. The popular party in 
Ireland has a right to participate in everything concerning the social 
and political condition of the country ; to compete with the consti- 
tutional and other parties who cater for public support, and stamp in 
this manner its Nationalist convictions and principles upon every- 
thing Irish, from a local board of poor-law guardians to a (by cir- 
cumstances compulsory) representation in an alien parliament. 

No party has a right to call itself National, which neglects resort- 
ing to all and every justifiable means to end the frightful misery 
under which our land-crushed people groan. It is exhibiting a 
callous indifference to the state of social degradation to which the 
power of the landlords of Ireland has sunk our peasantry to ask 



MICHAEL DAVITT. 893 

them to " plod on in slugsyish misery from sire to son, from age to 
age," until we, by force of party and party selfishness, shall free the 
country. It is playing the part of the Levite who passed by the 
man plundered by thieves. It is seeing a helpless creature strug- 
gling against suffocation in a ditch, and making no immediate effort 
to save him. If we refuse to play the part of the Good Samaritan 
to those who have fallen among robber landlords, other Irishmen 
"will not. The cry has gone forth, " Down with the land system that 
has cursed and depopulated Ireland ; " and this slogan cry of war 
has come from the Constitutionalists. 

In the name of the common good of our country, its honor, 
interests, social and political, let the two great Irish parties agree to 
differ on party principles, while emulating each other in service to 
our impoverished people. Let each endeavor to find points upon 
■which they can agree, instead of trying to discover quibbles whereon 
to differ. Let a centre platform be adopted, resting on a broad, 
generous, and comprehensive Nationalism, which will invite every 
earnest Irishman upon it. The manhood strength of Ireland could 
then become an irresistible power, standing ready at its post, while 
the whole Irish race, rallying to the supijort of such a platform, 
vould cry — 

" Wc want the laM that bore tis! 
We'll make that want our chorus; 

And we'll have it yet, tho' hard to get, 
By the heavens bending o'er us." 



SPEECH. 

BY ^— 



\ \^ V ""-^a -c 



Thomas Francis Meagher. 



[895 ] 



Speech 

At Conciliation ILvll, Dublin, July 28, 1846.. 



^F^Y Lord Mayou — I will commence as IMr. Mitchell con- 
^ eluded, with an alhision to tiie Whigs. 

I fully concur with my friend, that the most comprehensive 
measures which the AVhig minister may propose, will fail to 
lift this coimtry up to that position which she has the right to 
occupy, and the pcjwer to maintain. A Whig minister, I admit, 
may impi'ovc the pi'ovince — he will not restore the nation. Fran- 
<;hi£es, tenant compensation bills, liberal appointments may ameli- 
orate, they will not exalt ; they may meet the necessities, they ^vill 
not call forth the abilities of the coimtry. The errors of the past 
may be repaired — the hopes of the future will not be fnltiUed. 
With a vote in one pocket, a lease in the other, and "full justice" 
before him at the petty sessions, in the shape of a "restored magis- 
trate," the humblest peasant may be told that he is free ; trust me, my 
lord, he will not have the chai-acter of a freeman, his spirit to d.ire, 
his energy to act. From the stateliest mansion down to the poorest 
cottage in the land, the inactivity, the meanness, the debasement, 
which provincialism engenders, will be perceptible. 

These are not the crude sentiments of youth, though the mei-e 
commercial politician, who has deduced his ideas of self-govern- 
ment from the table of imports and exports, may satii-izc them as 
such. Age has uttered them, my lord, and the experience of eight 
jiars has preached them to the people. 

A few weeks since, and there stood up in the eouit of Queen's 
Bench an old and venerable man to teach the country the lessons he 
had learned in his youth, beneath the portico of the Irish Senate 
House, and which during a long life he had treasured in his heart, 



898 TREASCllY OF ELOQUENCE. 

as the costliest legacy a true citi^iea could bequeath to the land that 
gave him birth. 

What said this aged orator? 

" National iiidepciulciice docs not necessarily lead to national virtue and happi- 
ness ; but reason and experience demonstrate that public spirit and general happi- 
ness arc loolced for in vain under the withering influence of provincial subjection. 
The very consciousness of being dependent on another povrer for advancement in 
the scale of national being, weighs down the spirit, of a people, manacles the efforts 
of genius, depresses the energies of virtue, blunts the sense of common glory and 
common good, and produces an insulated selfishness of character, the surest mark 
of debasement in the individual, and mortality in the state." 

My lord, it was once said by an eminent citizen of Eome, the 
elder Pliny, that "wc owe our youth and manhood to our country, 
but our declining age to ourselves." This may have been the maxim 
of the Roman — it is not the maxim of the Irish patriot. One might 
have thought that the anxieties, the labors, the vicissitudes of a 
long career, had dimmed the fire which burned in the heart of the 
illustrious Roman whose words I have cited ; but now, almost from 
the shadow of death, he comes forth with the vigor of youth, and 
the authority of age, to serve the country in the defence of which 
he once bore arms, by an example, iny lord, that must shame the 
coward, rouse the sluggard, and stimulate the bold. These senti- 
ments have sunk det p into the public mind ; they are recited as the 
national creed. Whilst these sentiments inspire the people, I have 
no fear for the national cause. I do not dread the venal influeuce of 
the Whigs. 

Inspired by such sentiments, the people of this country will look 
beyond the mere redress of existing WTong, and strive for the 
attainment of future power. 

A good government may, indeed, redress the grievances of an 
injured people, but a strong people alone can build up a great 
nation. To be strong, a people must be self-reliant, self-ruled, self- 
sustained. The dependence of one people upon another, even for 
the bcnelits of legislation, is the deepest source of national weak- 
ness. By an unnatural law it exempts a people from their just 
duties — their just responsibilities. When you exempt a people 
from these duties, from these responsibilities, you generate in them 
a distrust in their own powers. Thus you enervate, if you do not 



THOMAS FUANCIS MEAGHER. 899 

utterly desti'oy that spirit whicli a sense of these responsibilities is 
sure to inspire, and which the fulfillment of these duties never fails 
to invigorate. Where this spirit does not actuate, the country may 
be tranquil — it will not be prosperous. It may exist, it will not 
thrive. It may hold together, it will not advance. Peace it may 
enjoy — for peace and freedom are compatible. But, my lord, it 
will neither accumulate wealth nor win a character ; it will neither 
benefit mankind by the enterprise of its merchants nor instruct man- 
kind by the example of its statesmen. 

I make these observations, for it is the custom of some moderate 
politicians to say, that when the Whigs have accomplished the 
"pacification" of the country, there will be little or no necessity for 
Ecpeal. My loi'd, there is something else, there is everything else 
to be done when the work of " pacification " has been accomplished 
— and here it is hardly necessary to observe that the prosperity of a 
country is perhaps the sole guarantee for its tranquillity, and that 
the more universal the prosperity, the more permanent will be the 
I'epose. 

But the Whigs will enrich as well as pacify. Grant it, my lord. 
Then do I conceive that the necessity for Repeal will augment. 
Great interests demand great safeguards. The prosperity of a 
mition requires due protection of a senate. Hei'eafter a national 
senate may require the protection of a national army. 

So much for the extraordinary aifluence with which we arc threat- 
ened, and whitfh, it is said by gentlemen on the opposite shore of 
the Irisli Sea, will crush this Association, and bury the enthusiasts 
who clamor for Irish nationality in a sepulchre of gold. This pre- 
diction, however, is feebly sustained by the ministerial pi-ogranime 
that has lately appeared. 

On the evening of the 16th, the Whig premier, in answer to a 
question that was put to him by the member for Finsbury, Mr. Duu- 
combe, is reported to have made this consolatory announcement: 

" yVc consider that the social grievances of Ireland are those wlijcli arc most 
prominent, and to ^vhich it is most lil^ely to be in our power to alTord, not a com- 
plete and immediate remedy, but some remedy, some land of improvement, so that 
some liind of hope may be entertained that, some ten or twelve years hence, the 
conutry will, by the measures v/c undertalce, be in a far better state with respect to 
the friditful dcstitntion and misery which now prevail in that country. W'c have 
that practical object in view." 



900 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

After that most consoLitory announcement, my lord, let those 
who have the patience of Job and the poverty of Lazarus, continue, 
in good faith, "to wait on Providence and the Whigs ;" continue to 
entertain ''some kind of hope," that if not "a complete and imme- 
diate remedy," at least " some remedy," " some improvement," will 
place this coautry " in a far Ijctter state " tlian it is at present, " some 
ten or twelve years hence." After that let those who prefer the 
periodical boons of a Whig government, to that which would be 
the al)iding blessing of an Irish parliament ; let those who deny to 
li'cland what they assert for Poland ; let those who would inflict, 
as Ilcnry Grattan said, "an eternal disability upon this country," to 
which Providence has assigned the largest facilities for poAvcr ; let 
those who would ratify the "base swap," as Mr. Shell once stigma- 
tized the Act of Union, and who would stamp perfection upon that 
deed of perfidy, — let such men 

" Plod, led on iu sluggish misery, 
Eotteu from sire to son, from ago to age, 
Proud of their trampled nature." 

But we, my lord, who are assembled in this hall, and in whose 
hearts the Union has not bred the slave's disease — Ave who have 
not been imperialized — we are here with the hope to undo that 
work, which forty- six years ago dishonored the ancient peerage and 
subjugated the people of our country. 

My lord, to assist the people of Ireland to undo that work I came 
to this hall. I came here to repeal the Act of Union — I came here 
for nothing else. Upon every other question I feel mj-sclf at per- 
fect liberty to differ from each and every one of you. Upon ques- 
tions of finance — questions of a religious character — questions of 
an educational character — questions of municipal policy — ques- 
tions that may arise from the proceedings of the legislature — upon 
all these questions I feel myself at perfect liberty to differ from 
each and every one of you. Yet more, my lord ; I maintain that it 
is my right to express my opinion upon each of these questions, if 
necessary. The right of free discussion I have here upheld. In 
the exercise of that riglit I hare differed sometimes from the leader 
of this Association, and would do so again. That right I will nut 
abandon — I shall maintain it to the last. 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 901 

Til doing so, let me not be told that I seek to undei-mine the influ- 
ence of the leader of the Association, and am insensible to his 
services. My lord, I am grateful for his services, and will uphold 
his just influence. 

This is the first time I have spoken in these terms of that illus- 
trious Irishman in this hall. I did not do so before — I felt it was 
unnecessary. I hate unnecessary praise — I scorn to receive it — I 
scorn ever to bestow it. 

No, my lord, I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters 
oflT my arms, whilst I was yet a child, and by whose influence my 
father — the first Catholic who did so for two hundred years — sat 
for the last two years in the civic chair of an ancient city. But, my 
lord, the same God who gave to that great man the power to strike 
down an odious ascendancy in this country, and enabled hiui to« 
institute in this land the glorious law of religious equality — the 
same God gave to me a mind that is my own — a mind that has not 
been mortgaged to the opinions of any man or any set of men — a 
mind that I was to use, and not suri'ender. 

My lord, in the exercise of that right, which I have here endeav- 
ored to uphold — a right which this Association should preserve 
inviolate, if it desires not to become a despotism — in the exercise 
of that right, I have difiered from Mr. O'Conncll on previous occa- 
sions, and differ from him now. I do not agree with him in tlie 
oi)inion he entertains of my friend, Charles Gavan Duffy — that 
man whom I am proud indeed to call my friend, though ho is i\ 
" convicted conspirator," and suffered for you in Richmond prison. 
I do not think he is a "maligner." I do not think he has lost, or 
deserves to lose, the public favor. 

I have no more connection with the "Nation "than I have Avitli the 
"Times." I therefore feel no delicacy on appearing here this day in 
defence of its principles, with which I avow myself identiiied. 

Mj' lord, it is to me a source of true delight and honest pride to 
speak this day in defence of that great journal. I do nnt fear to 
assume the position ; exalted though it be, it is easy to maintain it. 
The character of that journal is above reproach. The ability (hat 
sustains it has won an European fame. The genius of which it is 
the cflspring, the truth of which it is the oracle, have been recog- 
uized, my lord, by friends and foes. I care not how it may bo 



902 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

assailed — I care not howsoever great may be the taleut, howsoever 
high may he the position, of those whonow consider it their duty to 
impeach its writings — I do think it has won too splendid a repu- 
tation to lose the influence it has acquired. The people whose 
enthusiasm has been kindled by the impetuous fire of its verse, and 
whose sentiments have been ennobled by the earnest purity of its 
teachings, will not ratify the censure that has been pronounced upon 
it in this hall. Truth will have its day of triumph as well as its day 
of trial ; and I foresee that the fearless patriotism, which, in those 
pages, has braved the prejudices of the day, to enunciate grand 
truths, will triumi)h in the end. 

My lord, such do I believe to be the character, such do I antici- 
pate will be the fate of the principles that are now impeached. 

This brings me to what may be called the "question of the day." 

Before I enter upon that question, however, I will allude to one 
observation which fell from the honorable member for Kilkenny, and 
■which may be said to refer to those who expressed an opinion that 
has been construed into a declaration of war. 

The honorable gentlemen said — in reference, I presume, to those 
who dissented from the resolutions of Monday — that those who 
■were loudest in their declarations of war, were usually the most 
backward in acting up to those declarations. My lord, I do not 
find fault with the honorable gentleman for giving expression to a 
very ordinary saying, but this I will state, that I did not volunteer 
the opinion he condemns — to the declaration of that opinion I was 
forced. You left me no alternative — I should compromise my 
opinion, or avow it. To be honest, I avowed it. I did not do so 
to brag, as they say ; we have had too much of that "bragging " in 
Ireland. I would be the last man to emulate the custom. 

Well, I dissented from those peace resolutions, as they are called. 
Why so? In the first place, my lord, I conceive that there was not 
the least necessity for them. 

No member of this Association suggested an appeal to arms. No 
member of this Association advised it. No member of the Associa- 
tion would be so infatuated as to do so. In the existing circum- 
stances of the country, an excitement to arms would be senseless 
and wicked, because irrational. To talk, in our days, of repealing 
the Act of Union by force of arms, would be to rhapsodize. If the 



TIIOilAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 903 

attempt were made, it would be a decided failure. There might be 
riot in the street ; there wouhl be no revolution in the coinitry. 

The Secretary will far more effectually promote the cause of 
Repeal by registering votes in Greene Street than registering fire- 
arms in the head police office. Conciliation Hall, on Burgh Quay, 
is more impregnable than a rebel camp on Vinegar Hill. The hust- 
ings at Dundalk will be more successfully stormed than the maga- 
zine in the Park. The Registry club, the reading room, the polling 
booths, these are the only positions iu the country we can occupy. 
Voters' certificates, books, pamphlets, newspapers, these are the 
only weapons we can employ. 

Therefore, my lord, I cast my vote in favor of the peaceful policy 
of this Association. It is the only policy we can adopt. If that 
policy be pursued with truth, with courage, with fixed determination 
of purpose, I firmly believe it will succeed. 

But, my lord, I dissented from the resolutions before us for other 
reasons. I stated the first ; I will now come to the second : 

I dissented from them, for I felt that, by assenting to them, I 
should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of physical 
foree, in all countries, at all times, and under every circumstance. 
This I could not do ; for, my lord, I do not abhor the use of arms 
in the vindication of national rights. There are times when arms 
will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of 
blood, and many thousand drops of blood. 

Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion ; but, as the honor- 
able member for Kilkenny has observed, force must be used against 
force. The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not 
proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him 
be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that 
can alone prevail against battalioned despotism. 

Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral ; 
nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven — the 
Lord of Hosts — the God of battles — bestows His benediction upon 
those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. 

From that evening on which in the valley of Bethulia, He nerved 
the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, 
down to this, our day, on which he has blessed the insurgent 
chivalry of the Belgian priest. His Almighty hand hath ever been 



90-J: TKBASUEY OF ELOQUENCE. 

stretched forth from Ilis Throne of Light to consecrate t!ic fl;ig of 
freedom — to bless the patriot's sword. Be it in the defence, or be 
it in the assertion of a people's lil)erty, I hail the sword as a sacred 
weapon ; and if, my lord, it has sometimes taken the shape of the 
serpent and reddened the shrond of the oppressor wi(h too deep a 
dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other limes, 
and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the frceman'.s 
brow. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword! No, my lord, for in 
the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the liavarians, 
and through those cragged passes struck a jiath to lame i'or the 
peasant insurrectionists of Innspriuk. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword I No, ni}^ lord, for at 
its blow, a grand nation started from the waters of the Atlantic; 
and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimscin 
light, the crippled Colony sprang into the attitude of a pioiid 
Kepublic, — prosperous, limitless, and invincil)le. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword! No, my lord, for it 
swept the Dutch marauders out of the tine old towns of I'eigium — 
scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps — and knocki d 
their flag and sceptre, their law.s and bayonets, into the sluggish 
waters of the Scheldt. 

My lord, I learmd that it was the right of a nation to govern her- 
self, not in this Hall, but upon the ramparts of Antwerp. " his, the 
fii'st article of a nation's creed, I leai^ned upon those raniparfs, 
"where freedom was justly estimated, and the possession of the 
precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. 

M-y lord, 1 honor the Belgians, I admire the Belgians, 1 love the 
Belgians for their enthusiasm, their courage, their success ; and I, 
for one, will not stigmatize, for 1 do not abhor, the means by which 
thev obtained a Citizen King, a Chamber of Deputies. 



SPEECH 

BY V 

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, 



[005] 




YOUGHAL ABBEY, COUNTY CORK. 



Speech 

Before the Irish Protestant Benevolent Societt, Quebec, 
May, 1862. 



p^ RECEIVED some time ago a warm invitation from my friend, 
^^ Captain Anderson, tlie secretary of this society, asking me to 
^ be present and take part in tlie proceedings of tliis evening, 
i It was an invitation given with great cordiality, for an Irish 
society's benefit, and the object was to enable the society to assist 
the friendless emigrant and the inifortunate resident. It seems to 
one to be incident to our state of society, where we have no legal 
provision for the poor, no organized system of relief of any public 
general kind, that there should be a division of charitable labor 
among our different voluntary societies ; and as I look upon them 
all, whether under the auspices of Saint Patrick or any other patron 
saint, as being themselves but members of one vast society — the 
society of Canada — I did not feel that I could, either on Irish or 
on Canadian grounds, decline the invitation. It is very true, Mr. 
President, that you and I will not be found to-morrow worshipping 
under the same roof; but is that any reason why we should not be 
united here to-night in a common work of charity? With me it is 
no reason ; such differences exist in the first elements of our popu- 
lation ; and it is the duty of every man, especially of every man 
undergoing the education of a statesman, to endeavor to mitigate 
instead of inflaming religious animosities. No prejudices lie nearer 
the surface than those which plead the sanction of religion ; any 
idiot may arouse them, to the wise man's consternation, and the 
peaceful man's deep regret. If, in times past, they have been too 
often and too easily aroused, we must all deeply deplore it ; but for 
the future — in these new and eventful days, when it is so essential 
that there shall be complete harmony within our ranks, — let us all 
agree to brand the propagandist of bigotry as the most dangerous of 



(907) 



908 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

our enemies, because his work is to divide us among (jurselves, and 
thereliy render us incapable of common defence. 

It is upon this subject of the public spirit to be cultivated among 
us — of the S2:)irit which can alone make Canada safe and secure, 
rich and renowned — which can alone attract population and aug- 
ment capital, that I desire to say a few words with which I must 
endeavor to fulfil your expectations. I feel that it is a serious sub- 
ject for a popular festival — but these are serious times, and they 
bring upon their wings most serious reflections. That shot fired at 
Fort Sumpter on the 12th of April, 1861, had a message for the 
North as well as for the South; and here, in Quebec, if anywhere, 
by the light which history lends us, we should find those who can 
correctly read that eventful message. Here, from this rock, for 
which the immortals have contended ; here, from this I'ock, over 
which Richelieu's wisdom and Chatham's genius, and the memory of 
heroic men, the glory of three great nations has hung its halo, we 
should look forth upon a continent convulsed, and ask of a ruler: 
"Watchman, ivhat of the night?" 

That shot fired at Fort Sumpter was the signal gun of a new epoch 
for North America, which told the people of Canada, more plainly 
than human speech can ever express it, to sleep no more except on 
their arms ; unless in their sleep they desire to be overtaken and 
subjugated. For one, Mr. President, I can safely say, that, if I 
know myself, I have not a particle of prejudice against the United 
States ; on the contraiy, I am bound to declare that many things in 
the constitution and the people, I sincerely esteem and admire. 
What I contend for with myself, and what I would impress upon 
others, is, tlmt the lesson of the last few months, furnished by 
America to the world, should not be thrown away upon the inhabi- 
tants of Canada. 

I do not believe that it is our destiny to be engulfed into a Repub- 
lican union, renovated and inflamed with the wine of victory, of 
which she now drinks so freely ; it seems to me we h:ivc tiicatre 
enough midcr our feet to act another and a worthier part ; wc can 
hardly win the Americans on our own terms, and we never ought to 
join them on theirs. A Canadian nationality — not French Cana- 
(^i:ui, nor British Canadian, nor Irish Canadian — patriotism rejects 
the prefix, — is, in my opinion, what we should look forward to, — 



THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE. 909 

that is what we ought to labor for, that i.s what .we ought to be pre- 
pared to defend to the death. Heirs of one-seventh of the contin- 
ent, inheritors of a long ancestral story, and no part of it dearer to 
us than the glorious tale of this last century —warned not by cold 
chronicles only, but by living scenes passing before our eyes, of the 
dano-ers of an unmixed democracy — we are here to vindicate our 
capacity by the test of a new political creation. 

AVhat wc most immediately want, Mr. President, to carry on that 
work, is men ; more men, and still more men ! The ladies, I dare 
say, will not object to that doctrine. We may not want more law- 
yers and doctors, but we want more men in the town and country. 
"VVo want the signs of youth and growth in our young and growing 
■country. One of our maxims should be, "Early marriages, and 
death to old bachelors." I have long entertained a project of a spec- 
ial tax upon that most undesirable class of the population, an4 our 
friend, the Finance jNIinister, may perhaps have something of the 
kind among the agreeable surprises of his next Budget. Seriously, 
Mr. President, what I chiefly wanted to say on coming here, is this, 
that if we would made Canada safe and secure, rich and renowned, 
we must all liberalize — locally, sectionally, religiously, nationally. 

There is room enough in this country for one great free people ; 
but there is not room enough under the same flag and the same laws, 
for tw^o or three angry, suspicious, obstructive " nationalities." 

Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun, arc the 
children Ijorn in her bosom, and nursed upon her breast, but when 
the man of another country, wherever born, speaking whatever 
speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a country to serve, and 
honor, and cleave to, in weal or in woe, — when he heaves up the 
anchor of his heart from its old moorings, and lays at the feet of the 
mistress of his choice, his new country, all the hopes of his ripe 
manhood, he establishes, by such devotion, a claim to consideration, 
not second even to that of the children of the soil. He is their 
brother, delivered by a new birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic 
ship that ushers him into existence in the new world — he stands by 
his own election among the children of the household, and narrow 
and most unwise is that species of public spirit, which, in the per- 
verted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks, "a fair 
iield and no favor." 



910 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

I am not aljout to tiilk politics, Mr. President, though these are 
grand politics. I reserve all else fur what is usually called " an- 
other place," — and I may add, for another time. But I am so 
thoroughly convinced and assured that we are gliding along the cur- 
rents of a new epoch, that if I break silence at all iu the presence 
of my fellow subjects, I cannot choose but speak of the immense 
issues which devolve upon us, at this moment, in this country. 

I may be pardoned, perhaps, if I refer to another matter that 
comes home to you, Mr. President, and to myself. Though we are 
alike opposed to all invidious national distinctions on this soil, we 
are not opposed, I hope, to giving full credit to all the elements 
which at the present day compose our population. In this respect, 
it is a source of gratification to learn that among j'our invited 
guests to-night there are twelve or thirteen members of the House 
to which I iiave the honor to belong — gentlemen from both sides of 
the House — who drew their native breath in our own dearly be- 
loved ancestral island. It takes three-quarters of the world in these 
days to hold an Irish family, and it is pleasant to know that some of 
the elder sons of the family are considered, by their discriminating 
fellow citizens, worthy to be entrusted with the liberties and for- 
tunes of their adopted country. We have here men of Irish birth 
who have led, and who still lead the Parliament of Canada, and who 
arc determined to lead it in a spirit of genuine libei-ality. 

We, Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, born and bred in a land 
of religious controversy, should never forget that we now live and 
act in a Imid of the fullest religious and civil liberty. All we have 
to do, is, each for himself, to keep down dissensions, which can only 
weaken, impoverish and retard the country ; each for himself, do all 
he can to increase its wealth, its strength and its reputation ; each 
for himself, you and you, gentlemen, and all of us — to welcome 
every talent, to hail every invention, to cherish every gem of art, 
to foster every gleam of authorship, to honor every acquirement 
and every natural gift, to lift ourselves to the level of our destinies, 
to rise above all low limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to cul- 
tivate that true catholicity of spirit, which embraces all creeds, all 
classes, and all races, in order to make of our boundless province, so 
rich in known and unknown resources, a great new Northern nation. 



LETTER 



Bishop Nulty. 



£911] 











RIGHT REV. T. NULTY, BISHOP OF MEATH. 



To Joseph Cowen, M, P., Newcastle-on-Tyne, 



fpY Dear Sir, — I have neither leisure nor inclincation to take 
any part in politics, and it was only in exceptional circum- 
stances that I ever meddled in them at all. I have not 
often obtruded on the attention of the public except under 
the pressure of a public necessity or when I could not help it. But 
now that the excitement caused by the late extraordinary action of 
the Government has subsided considerably, and that the results of 
that policy can be calmly and dispassionately examined, it becomes 
the sacred duty of every man who has anything to say in defence 
of his country not to withhold it. The situation of affairs which the 
Government has so suddenly and so unexpectedly created in Ireland, 
has no parallel or precedent even in her own melancholy history ; 
and it has no existing counterpart (except, perhaps, in Eussia) in 
any other country on the globe. The people of this nation now live 
under the sway of coercion, and of force, and of arbitrary arrests 
and imprisonment, and not under the rule of constitutional law and 
free government. Our liberties have been forfeited de jure by the 
disastrous Coercion Bill of last year, and they are now simply anni- 
hilated de facto by the excessive severity with which the Govern- 
ment exercises the exceptional powers given them by that Act. By 
the strange and extraordinary use they have made of these uncon- 
stitutional powers, they have profoundly shocked public feeling 
with a succession of sudden and painful surprises. For months 
past we heard every day with bewildered astonishment of the arrest 
and imprisonment of innocent, educated, and highly-gifted Irishmen, 
who in the estimation of their countrymen were above even the sus- 
picion of anything that could be regarded as criminal or dishonor- 
able. Although the people's patience had thus been sorely tried, 
they still hoped on. But the sudden and unexpected arrest of 
Messrs. Parnell, Sexton, and Dillon; the total suppression of the 



914 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Land League organization ; the dispersion by force of peaceful 
public meetings, and the violent and unnatural silence and restraint 
jout on freedom of speech, all occurring as tbey did in rapid succes- 
sion, spread terror and dismay. 

During the passing of the Coercion Act, the Government had 
solemnly but perfidiously pledged itself to Parliament that the fact 
of being a member of the Land League organization would be no 
ground for arresting a man as a " reasonable suspect," and yet emi- 
nent and distinguished Land Leaguei-s were, as a matter of fact, the 
only persons actually arrested under it. On the other hand, you 
would search in vain, among the actual Suspects, for the " dissolute 
rufHans and village tyrants " to whom alone it was solemnly 
promised the operations of the Act would be restricted. No man, 
therefore, being able to make even a rational guess at the principles 
by which the Government was guided in forming its estimate of a 
" Suspect," every man now feels that his liberty is not safe for the 
space of a single hour. Your innocence and immunity from everjr 
form of crime; your punctual observance of every law, human as 
well as divine ; the irreproachable testimony of your own conscience, 
afford you no guarantee against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. 
You are forced, therefore, to infer that every hour you are left ia 
the enjo^'ment of your freedom ; every hour you are allowed to live 
in your house ; in the bosom of your family, and not in the prison 
cell, confronted and watched by warders and jailers, is a free gift 
to which you really have no right or legal claim, and which you 
enjoy from, and during the good will and pleasure of the Govern- 
ment. And as the youth and manhood of the nation, the most 
gifted, the most intelligent, and the most highly educated — in fact, 
the very flower of the agricultural, the industrial, and the com- 
mercial classes — were all once members of the now proscribed 
Land League organization, so every man you meet is in fear and 
trembling for his personal freedom. Many have deserted their 
business, their families, and their homes, and as all feel the sword of 
Damocles suspended over their heads, so no one can apply himself 
with his usual earnestness and skill to the calling in which he earned 
his living. You feel yourself instinctively under the baleful influence 
of a reign of lei'ror. 

You cannot help mistrusting and suspecting those whom you 



BISHOP NULTY. 915 

never doubted before ; and no matter how sternly your reason may 
rebuke the groundlessness of your fears, you still fancy yourself 
surrounded by spies and informers, ready and eager to misinterpret 
and misrepresent your most thoughtless and innocent actions. And 
fresh grounds for alarm hSve recently arisen from the decidedly 
altered tone and bearing of the police force throughout the kingdom. 
A strange and extraordinary spirit of brutality and insolence 
seems to have seized on this force, and displays itself ostentatiously 
on every occasion that offers. It is true they never possessed the 
moderation, the patience, and forbearance of a force that seemed 
impressed with the responsibility of respecting the rights of citi- 
zens, even at the time that it became their duty to act with firmness 
and vigor against them as offenders, but now they have shaken ofT 
even the semblance of moderation, and they scornfully and defiantly 
irritate and threaten the people, as if they had no right to be re- 
garded as anything better than rebels or slaves. They appear tO' 
think that they have a right to do just what they please, to be amenable 
to no tribunal, and to have relieved themselves from every sense of 
responsibility. I know of one instance, at least, in which a large 
body of police, with a resident magistrate at their head, deemed 
chagrined and disappointed because the peaceable and orderly de- 
meanor of the people deprived them even of a pretext for firing at 
them, as they had threatened. Under the guidance of men, whose 
conduct has more than hnce excited a well-grounded suspicion that 
they were under an artificial excitement, which, in them, would be 
highly criminal, this force now assails with wanton and indiscrimi- 
nate brutality the innocent and the peaceable, as well as the disorderly 
and the riotous. They fire volleys into crowds of unai-med men, at the 
very time they are actually running for their lives ; and even the 
dignity and helplessness of woman, which render her personal 
safety sacred in every nation on earth that is civilized as well as 
brave, afford her no protection from these warriors, for they shoot 
down women as well as men ; and, accoi-ding to sworn accounts, 
they bayonet to death young girls even when they are down. Three 
coi'oners' juries, on their solemn oaths and on sworn testimony, have 
found and recorded verdicts of wilful murder against them, and yet 
the accused appear to be still at large, and do not seem to have been 
in the least disconcerted by such insignificant incidents. And if 



916 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

any one, like myself, ventures to raise his voice and give vent to his 
feelings in a i^iercing cry of anguish and of pain over the ruins of 
the liberties of his country, he is liable to be arrested and thrown 
into prison, to add one more to the three hundred and forty high- 
spirited, intelligent, and educated mea who are now, like so many 
wild beasts, caged within bars of iron, deprived of their liberty, 
their freedom, and every other gift that makes life agreeable, or 
even endurable. And yet these men have not been convicted of 
any crime ; let them clamor as they may, they will not be 1)rought 
to trial, and no opportunity given them for proving their innocence. 
They are subjected to the indignities, to the solitude and the hor- 
rors of prison life, simply because the Prime Minister and the Chief 
Secretary wish it : and they must remain there during their good 
will and pleasure. This system of arbitrary arrests — of cruel and 
indefinite imprisonment, for purely political crimes, which are only 
" susjjected" — whilst it continued merely a Continental institution, 
shocked and scandalized Mr. Gladstone immensely, and he denounced 
it in burning words that set all Europe in a blaze. But oh ! shade 
of King Bomba, you have now your revenge ! The system that 
had then been reprobated in words that will live forever, that had 
then been relegated into eternal infamy, oblivion, and shame, has 
quite recently been discovered among the "resources of civiliza- 
tion " ; has been revived, in its own proper living individuality and 
identity, by the very man who had then so fiercel}' decried it. It is 
now one of the ilourishing social institutions of fi'ee England, and 
is actually in full swing this moment, plaguing her majesty's subjects 
throughout the jails of Ireland with forms of physical sutfering and 
mental anguish that to them are all but intolerable, and from which, 
before the winter shall have passed, some shall very likely escape 
by going mad, and others by becoming totally ruined in health, and- 
rendered utterly worthless for the rest of their lives. 

Surely, then, Mr. Gladstone might have spared that galling phrase 
with which he mocks and insults us, when he assures the world that 
to annihilate a nation's liberties, to crowd her prisons and her jails 
with the best and noblest of her sous, to silence freedom of speech, 
and to make eveiy man in the community dependent for his per- 
sonal freedom on his sole, arbitrary will, are all but departments in 
the high and accomplished art of governing on principles derived 



BISHOP NULTY. 917 

from the "resources of civilization." Government by force, by ar- 
bitrary arrests, by wholesale imprisonment, without judge or jury, 
by silencing freedom of speech and the right to complain of injus- 
tice and wrong, used to be regarded as a hateful despotism which 
would not be tolerated for one week in any civilized country, and 
which could not exist at all except in communities that were uncivilized 
and barbarous. But when men apply themselves to the odious task 
of oppressing or enslaving their fellow-creatures, they are wonder- 
fully ready in devising smart incisive phrases with which, in defiance 
of decency and truth, they endeavor to palliate and pass off on the 
thoughtless forbearance of the pul)lic, excesses to which they would 
not venture to direct attention by professedly justifying or defend- 
ing them. 

History abounds with phrases of this kind, and they are associ- 
ated with memories of which Mr. Gladstone would feel ashamed. 
I think it was Cromwell that characterized " as a great mercy of 
God " the wholesale slaughter of innocent and unarmed citizens ; 
and the Eussian tyrant announced to the world " that order reigned 
at Warsaw " at the veiy time that Warsaw ran red with the blood of 
Poland's noblest and bravest defenders. Not to talk, then, of the 
insult wantonly flung at a spirited and sensitive people, an ordin- 
ary sense of self-respect and a decent regard for his own character 
ought to have induced Mr. Gladstone to hold his hand here at any 
rate. 

I have deliberately misstated nothing. I do not deny that a Tory 
Government could be found which would do exactly the same thing, 
if it were allowed freely to follow its naturally tyrannical instincts ; 
but I do den}' that any Tory Government would have the power or 
would dare to set up such a form of Government whilst the Liberal 
party sat on the Opposition benches. A Liberal administration, like 
the present Government, is then about the greatest misfortune that 
could happen to our country. 

An old Roman said that no one but a fool would argue with the 
master of twenty legions. Mr. Parnell had the rashness, at Wex- 
ford, to reply to the Prime Minister's speech at Leeds. Further, 
he had the misfortune, in clear, logical and irresistible argument, 
fairly to vanquish him. Mr. Dillon's singular haste to repudiate 
Mr. Gladstone's questionable compliments, and Mr. Shaw's famous 



918 TREASUKY OF ELOQUENCE. 

linchpin process for ridding the world of civil-hill servers, furnished 
Mr. Parnell with a retort whicli was simply crushing, and whioli 
must have wounded the Prime Minister deeply. Now, all the world 
knows that Mr. Gladstone is an intellectual giant ; but as he is not 
infallible, he sometimes makes mistakes, and if challenged and van- 
quished on these mistakes, he bears his defeat very badly. When 
smarting under the defeat and fall of his former administration, 
chiefly through the action taken by the Irish bishops, in the vast, 
varied, and almost boundless grasp of his intellectual powers, he 
sought relief for his wounded feelings in the various departments of 
ancient and modern literature, and even of Theology. Everybody 
remembers how he applied himself to the study of Theology ; had a 
fling at the Syllabus, at the infallibility of the Pope, and at the 
degrading influence which the Catholic religion exercised on all who 
had the misfortune to belong to it. And everybody remembers, 
too, how powerfully and how scathingly his rash and ignorant accu- 
sations were exposed and refuted in about the most beautiful and 
eloquent brochure that ever emanated even from the pen of Cardjinal 
Newman. In the soreness and irritation then created by Parnell's 
intellectual victory, lies the source of that impetuous, precipitate, 
and impassioned policy which Mr. Gladstone then suddenly inaugu- 
rated, and to which he has since steadily adhered. Incidents have 
cropped up from time to time as adjuncts of that policy, such as 
Parnell's dismissal from a magistracy which he did not prize ; Dr. 
Kenny's dismissal by a sealed order ; the threatening notices served 
on the telegraph boys, etc. ; all of which seem so low, so petty, and 
so mean that any man in his senses, and not in a passion, would 
scorn to stoop to them. Now, sir, it appears to me that a man who 
holds in one hand the absolute disposal of the libei'ties of a nation, 
and in the other the tremendous responsibilities of his position, has 
no right to lay himself fairly open to the imputation of irritation or 
feeling in the exercise of the exceptional and dangerous powers 
entrusted to him. For passion and feeling blind every man who 
allows himself to be influenced or governed by them ; and some- 
thing has blinded Mr. Gladstone certainly. 

He rests the whole justification of his sudden and extraordinary 
policy on the fact that Mr. Parnell was preventing by intimidation 
and otlier unlawful means, the tenantry of Ireland from availing 



BISHOP NULTY. 919 

"themselves of the benefits of the Land Bill. That accusation has 
never been proved, and in m}' judgment it never can be proved, 
simply because it is not true. That Mr. Parnell advised and warmly 
exhorted the Irish tenantry to hold their hands off the Laud Bill till 
he had the decision on the test cases, no one will deny. Therefore, 
infers Mr. Gladstone, he unlawfully prevented them from appropri- 
ating any of the advantages which the Bill held out. Now, any one 
will at once see that this is a " non sequilur " which must be sup- 
ported by proof, and as far as we know, at least, no such proof is 
as jet forthcoming. For might not the Irish tenantry hold aloof 
for a time from the Land Court (and they might not be advised to 
do so) for another far more rational and important pui'pose, viz., to 
facilitate and expedite the progress of business in the Court, and at 
the same time to draw from tlie Land Bill the largest possible 
amount of gain it was capable of yielding. That these were the 
objects really underlying Mr. ParncU's advice to the tenantry can 
very easily be made clear. 

Owing to the extraordinary character of the jiowers vested in the 
Land Commission, its first decisions became matters of vital impor- 
tance. This is by no means an ordinary Commission, authorized 
simply to interpret and administer an Act of Parliament. It seems 
ratlier an extraordinary Commission, vested in certain contingencies 
which will frequently arise under the Act, with quasi legislative 
powers, virtually to enact new laws as well as to administer them. 

The settlement, therefore, of the Irish Land Question has only 
commenced with the passing of the Land Act ; it is, as it were, still 
before Parliament ; it is as yet under the consideration of the Legis- 
ture in all the vast and varied comprehensiveness of its jjraciical 
details. Very many of the great principles of justice, equity, and 
right, are as yet to be determined, defined, and declared, and have 
as 3'et to receive, thi'ough the judgments of this Court, the sanction 
and approval of the Legislature. 

To enable the Court, therefore, to discharge its duties witli delib- 
eration and dignity, and, on the other hand, not to weary and dis- 
gust its suitors with intolerable procrastination and delay, Mr. 
Parnell, with the deep practical sagacity for which he is remarkable, 
devised the scheme of submitting at the onset his test cases, the 
leading feature of which was, that they were essentially tyjiical and 



920 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

representative of classes numerous enough to be counted by hun- 
dreds and thousands. 

[Bishop Nulty then goes into the discussion in detail of the course 
the Court was bound in justice to pursue under the conditions of its 
appointment, and the diiHculty of ascertaining that tiling called 
"fair" rent.] 

Assuming that the prices of products range at a certain average, 
the value of any holding will entirely depend on its productiveness. 
The productiveness of a holding is a fact of great importance to 
its owner, and it affects, directly or indirectly, the interests of many 
others in its vicinity. The productiveness, therefore, cannot be sat- 
isfactorily proved except by the testimony of such witnesses, and 
their testimony proves it beyond all reasonable doubt. Now, if Mr. 
Parnell demanded accurate information, he would have all the local 
knowledge existing on the subject absolutely at his disposal, and 
dozens of trustworthy witnesses would A^oluntarily come forward. 

The Land League was about the most perfect and the most highly- 
disciplined organization that ever existed in any country. It was 
everywhere present, active, intelligent and discriminating. The 
local branches were, as it were, so many deliberative assemblies, 
which absorbed all the talent, the experience, and knowledge of 
every kind in the various districts in Avhich they were situated. 
Their members were, for far the greater part, the very flower of 
the industrial classes of the locality. Each branch possessed Avithin 
itself all the local knowledge existing on the productiveness of the 
land, on the value of the land, and on every circumstance of imjoor 
tance connected with the laud of the holdings. 

Further, in the conferences that were held, and in the discussions 
and debates that were carried on by the members, that knowledge 
Tvas systematized and arranged, so as to be ready for use at a 
moment's notice when called on. 

After these preliminary preparations had been made, Mr. Parnell 
would submit the land of Ireland to the arbitrament of the Land 
Court, not in isolated solitary holdings, but in large lots of holdings 
of the same kind. The Court could examine tlie test cases that he 
submitted, and subject them to the most rigorous judicial inquiry;, 
or it could take any individual case of its own. Whatever judg- 
ment it pronounced on any of the test cases would have virtually 



BISHOP NULTY. 921 

been pronounced on all the cases of the class to which it belonged. 
After the test cases had been decided, the subsequent proceedings- 
of the Court would simply be practical applications of the principles 
that were sanctioned and accepted on the decision of the test cases. 

And thus the very circumstance on which Mr. Parnell relied to 
furnish the tenant with the means of drawing from the Land Act 
the lai'gest amount of gain, is the very ground on which Mr. Glad- 
stone accuses him of the crime of preventing him from drawing any 
benefit at all from it. I have wearied you not only with the out- 
lines, but with the details of Mr. Parnell's policj' ; and I have to 
ask, is there anything in it immoral, obstructive, or criminal to the 
degree of deserving the punishment of imprisonment in IGlmainham ! 

[Bishop Nulty here refers to the large number of nominal land- 
lords whoSe places really belonged to money lenders, but who still 
manage to live sumptuously upon the poor, whoso extinction was, 
and justly so, the first step in Mr. Parnell's policy. In the course 
of the reference Dr. Nulty declares that the whole strength and 
vitality, the irresistible energy and activity of the Land League 
organization, were all derived from the enormous injustice and cru- 
elty of the land system, which had created it, and which it assailed, 
and that a great enthusiastic movement, in which a whole people 
combines, is an impossibility where some great social grievance does 
not lie at the root of it.] 

But the Government would not allow Mr. Parnell to use Mr. 
Gladstone's Bill as a great remedial measure. In their impatience 
and irritation they had recourse to force, which is no remedy at all 
for stifling the discontent which springs from injustice. Anyone can 
see, in the lawlessness and dism-der that now prevail and which 
every good man reprobates and deplores, the folly as well as the 
failure of that remedy. And yet the magistrates of the various 
Irish counties (from Dublin to Westmeath) now loudly applaud this 
suicidal policy of the Government, and audaciously call on it for 
fresh and still more repressive coercion. But as nearly all of these 
magistrates are landlords, their promises of sympathy and support 
carry with them no moral weight. They really amount to no more 
than a last effort to sustain their own expiring influence and power. 
The class prejudices and passions that characterized these magiste- 
rial meetings, may be estimated from the fact that a. man like Lord 



<)32 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Monck has been so hlinded and infiituated by them as to make state- 
ments against Mr. Parnell and the Land League that were so scan- 
dalously nntrue that one feels a difficulty in comprehending how 
they were not (as I am sure they were not) wilful and deliberate. 
But if it was safe for Lord Monck, it was very nngenerous of him 
to attack a man who could not, as he was aware, reply in his de- 
fence. 

The moderation, and, indeed, I might add, the magnanimity of 
the magistrates of Westmeath in not calling for, in accordance with 
a time-honored custom,- a Coercion Act exclusively for themselves, 
are edifying in the highest degree. But the excessive severity of 
the Coercion Act now existing, especially in its administration, 
counterbalances its non-exclusiveness, and so these hereditary coer- 
cionists are satisfied to let things stand as they ai-e. 

[Dr. Nulty then further goes on to show how, while Mr. Parnell 
recognized the Bill as not all he wanted, he still intended to get all 
the good he really conld out of it — a thing that the Commissioners, 
judging frofti what they have already done, do not mean, it being 
next to impossible to know anything about the lands they are called 
to pass upon without local knowledge. Speaking of the vast expen- 
ditures and failures of the imported Scotch scientific, and tlie "model 
farm " enterprises to increase productiveness, he asks : — ] 

And how is it that the illiterate, unscientific farmer, hy following 
the old system of husbandry, is able to draw from his farm what is 
sufficient to keep himself and his family alive at any rate, and at the 
same time pay a rack-rent to the landlord ? 

[Speaking of the decisions so far rendered, he notes it as a curious 
fact that the Government's own valuation was never taken as a 
guide. They always managed to hover over the line of Griffith's 
valuation, but rarely or never to descend — facts that of themselves 
will inevitably create a feeling of strong, reasonable, and wide- 
spi'ead discontent, which will resuscitate the Land League organiza- 
tion, and infuse into it such fresh vitality and strength as, when the 
coercion shall have expired, will make it simply irresistil)]e.] 

But Mr. Gladstone says that the Land Question has been finally 
settled, and that he will listen to no further argument or discussion 
on it. But he said the same before, still the Land League agitation 
compelled him to take the question up, and pass his bill. But the 



BISHOP NULTT. ' 023 

truth is that finalitij.m legislation on any question is an absurdity ; 
4ind with the widespread and unprecedented privations and suffer- 
ings of the agricultural classes in England and Scotland, on the one 
hand, and American and Australian competition on the other, final- 
ity in legislating on land is the most glaring of all absurdities. 
"Why ? Legislation on the Land Question is at its commencement, 
and in another year or two it will be in full swing in England and 
Scotland as well as here. 

Two years ago they had only the haziest ideas of their constitu- 
tional rights to assemble together, to look each other in the face, 
and talk freely and frankly with each other over their common 
grievances. But now they are practically, as well as theoretically^, 
convinced that by coming to a common, clear understanding, by 
harmonious action, and by combining all their energies and ef- 
forts, they can become a power that is almost irresistible. And 
they have actually come to that common understanding ; they have 
legally and constitutionally united and combined, and created about 
the greatest and most thoroughly disciplined oi-ganization that has 
«ver arisen in any country. The justice and legality of the organ- 
ization itself, and the reasonableness of the reforms at which it 
aimed, were acknowledged and recognized in Parliament, and out 
of it, by the highest legal authorities in the land. The Government 
itself, thougji it always hated and feared, yet never ventured till 
quite recently to question it, and then onh' on a few points, which are 
mere accidental changes in the oi-ganization, and which can be easily 
eliminated. Now, sir, I confess I find it hard to have patience with 
some educated men whom you will hear from time to time awarding 
to Mr. Gladstone the whole merit of having passed the Land Act. 
Why, sir, you yourself have made it as clear as light that Mr. 
Gladstone, in taking up the Land Question, only yielded to an 
inevitable necessity which he resisted as long as he was able, and 
which would have shattered his Government to atoms if he contin- 
ued to resist it much longer. 

It was the Land League organization that dragged the tenants' 
wrongs into light ; held them up to the gaze of the empire in a blaze 
of oratory and eloquence ; that made every honest man indignant 
and ashamed of them, and thus created a strong, outspoken public 
opinion, which made it a necessity for Mr. Gladstone to pass his 



924 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

Land Bill. This bill being thus the hard-earned fruit of our own 
labor, why should we not appropriate the gaiu as well as the glorj^ 
of having passed it? 

That Mr. Gladstone should punish and degrade an honorable and 
a distinguished rival on grounds such as these ; that he should con- 
sign him, without judge or jury, to imprisonment and to chains ; 
that he should extort from him, in the indignation which such injus- 
tice naturally provoked, a pretext for suiDpressing an organization 
whose justice and legality he never questioned, appear to me an ar- 
bitrary exercise of power which Liberal and Radical statesmen are 
bound by their own principles to disown. 

The effete, and I suppose I may add the now expiring sj^stem of 
L"ish Landlordism, was the great central social evil of our country 
for ages. A single class, numerically not large, kept a whole nation 
steeped in indescribable misery by exacting rents which in instances 
without number, nearly equalled the value of the whole produce of 
the land, and consequently it was all but impossible to meet them. 
Under this unjust sj'stem the people of a whole nation were kept 
continually on the verge of starvation, and hence the smallest unftxv- 
orablc change in seasons, the slightest failure of their crops, partic- 
ularly of the potato crop, slaughtered them wholesale, and sent 
them to premature graves. The landlords were further armed with 
the arbitrar}- power of evicting on any scale they thought proper, 
and they did exercise that power on a gigantic scale. I was mj'self 
an eye-witness of some of these clearances ; and when I venture to 
look back at them, the very memory of what I saw makes me shud- 
der even still. In one county in this diocese there are at this mo- 
ment 3(59,000 acres of tJie finest land in the world laid down in grass 
and pasture. That immense tract of country was cleai-ed substan- 
tially since the beginning of the present century. Of that vast, vir- 
tuous and industrious population that had been driven off these lands, 
those who had the courage and the means fled to foreign lands, and 
those who could not perished in the ditches or in the poorhouses. 

A sentence of eviction is equivalent to a sentence of death in 
a country where, if you are to live at all, you must live by your in- 
dustry on the land. A mortal fear of such eviction, then, was the 
only motive that could have influenced the people of a nation to sub- 
mit to any rack-rents which robbed them of the fruits of their own 



BISHOP NULTY. 925 

improvements and kept them perpetually on the border line of star- 
vation. Mr. Gladstone's own Land Commission, although only in 
its infancy, is letting in a flood of light on the huge and ghastly 
proportions of the great social evil which for years past preyed on 
the vitals and drank up the life's blood of the nation. A system under 
which landlords exacted twenty, thirty, forty, and in some cases 
one hundred per cent, in excess of the real value cannot but be re- 
garded as a system of legalized injustice ; for it has challenged theo- 
retically our I'ight to live in the country in which we were born, and 
it has practically driven our people as exiles in hundreds of thous- 
ands into foreign lands. Irishmen icould be more than human if they 
cherished for such a system anything less than the fiercest hatred. 
And 3^et this embodiment of injustice and cruelty has been fostered 
and protected with as much paternal tenderness and care as if it had 
been an essential requirement, not only for the good government, 
but for the very existence of the British Empire. The unjust and 
irrational partiality of British statesmen for Irish landlordism, 
coupled with the implacable severity with which they pimished any 
one who dared to interfere with it, has been beyond all doubt, the 
main cause of the unpopulai'ity and practical failure of British rule 
at all times in Ireland. Were it not for the l)aleful effects of this 
one cause, Ireland, without merging its nationality for a moment, 
would be as peaceful, and as orderly as Scotland. We oflTered suc- 
cessive governments, a hundred times over, a generous loyalty, a 
cheerful submission to their laws, a co-operation in everything calcu- 
lated to advance the interests of England as well as our own, if they 
would only remove the injustice of this great social grievance which 
threatened our very existence. But they would not accept our loy- 
alty on these conditions. They regarded the estrangement, the dis- 
content, and even the avowed hatred of a nation as mere petty evils, 
when compared to the irreparable disaster of putting Irish landlords 
in bad humor. And the same unjust and irrational partiality infat- 
uates British statesmen still. When the tyrannical injustice of Irish 
Landlordism had, quite lately, become intolerable, and when the 
unanimous voice of the country had called on Mr. Gladstone to grap- 
ple with it, and place some restraint on its excesses, why did he begin 
by placating it, by appeasing it, and by actually immolating to it the 
liberty and freedom of the nation he M'as directed to rescue from its 



926 TREASURY OF ELO(;;UENCE. 

cruelty and injustice? And was it because he had imposed some 
restraints on its rack-renting injustice and its exterminating cruelty 
that he has since felt himself called on to make full and ample repa- 
ration and atonement, by punishing and imprisoning the men who 
were guilty of the crime of having compelled him to interfere with 
it at all. A policy based on a principle like this, does not merit 
either gratitude or approval. As a matter of fact, the whole Liberal 
pai'ty, and Mr. Gladstone's government in particular, can hardly be 
lower than it actually is with the Irish people abroad, as well as at 
home. If we Irishmen at home, cordially detest the Irish system of 
land tenure, our countrymen abroad simply execrate and abhor it.. 
The millions of Irishmen in America, England, Scotland, Canada, 
and Australia, look back on the land of their bii'th with a depth and 
tenderness of feeling, of interest, of attachment, and of love which 
an Englishman can hardly comprehend. To the deep, keen, undy- 
ing interest which these exiles feel in the welfare of the dear old 
land, and to the longing love with which they yearn and sigh to get 
one last look at it before they tlie, are associated a fierce execration 
and hatred of the system of land tenure which had cruelly and 
unjustly banished them away from it forever The strongest and 
deepest desire in the hearts of these Irish exiles would be to lend a 
hand and share their last shilling in any fair effort to extirpate and 
destroy the injustice of a system which they regarded as the respon- 
sible cause of their expatriation. 

The inti'epidity with which Mr. Parnell denounced this system 
before hostile majorities ; the practical skill with which he devel- 
oped to the highest pitch of efficiency the Land League organiza- 
tion ; his splendid eftbi'ts to emancipate the land from the thraldom 
of Landlordism, realized to the fullest all these exiles longed for and 
desired. He won at once all the confidence and the attachment 
that generous hearts can bestow. Their generous sympathies soon 
assumed a practical and substantial form. Thousands of Land 
League organizations sprang up, as it were, by magic in every part 
of the world. There is not a city, town or village throughout the 
vast extent of the United States, Canada, Australia, as well as in 
England and Scotland, in which there are not found flourishing 
Land League branches, thoroughly organized and disciplined, all in 
communication with the great central (though now suppressed) 



BISHOP MJLTY. 927 

organization at home, and contributing to it a moral and a pecuniarj' 
support that makes it a power almost irresistible. Streams of gold 
still flow from these innumerable sources abundantly into its treas- 
ury. Mr. Parnell on the day of his arrest was regarded as the 
greatest, the most trusted, and the most popular Irishmen of this 
century, or perhaps of any other. The very day of his arrest IMr. 
Gladstone addressed a meeting, composed princij)ally of aldermen, 
at the Guildhall in London, and his theme, of course, was the ex- 
cited state of Ireland. Mr. Parnell had been arrested some hours 
before the meeting, and Mr. Gladstone was, of course, fully cog- 
nizant of the fact. At the very height, however, of a fierce, 
impassioned, and scathing philippic, in which Mr. Gladstone has 
no rival, and by which he can drive an auditory into all but absolute 
frenzy, a telegram arrives. The messenger presents himself exactly 
at the proper moment, forces his way to the place I'rom which Mr. 
Gladstone is speaking, and presents the telegram amid the breatli- 
less silence. Mr. Gladstone reads it, and, with the solemnity of an 
accomplished actor, announces that the first act of the drama is 
opened — Mr. Parnell is ari'ested, and is now safely lodged in Kil- 
mainham. 

The announcement brought the meeting, to a man, to their feet^ 
and it was hailed witli loud, ringing, and prolonged cheers, and with 
the most extravagant demonstration of exultation. In reading 
this, it would strike any one that Mr. Gladstone might have re- 
mained satisfied with the victory he had fairly, or imfairly, won over 
his great rival, and that this wild, indecent ebullition of feeling 
over a falling foe looked very like striking him when he ■was down. 
I have no doubt that the enthusiastic applause that Mr. Gladstone 
had evoked afforded him the higliest delight, but it did not excite 
the same feelings in the minds of millions of Irishmen who read of 
it with the neM's of Mr. Parnell's arrest the next morning. The 
■wild, enthusiastic outburst of triumph and joy which hailed the 
announcement of Mr. Pai-nell's imprisonment caused them greater 
pain, irritated and exasperated them more, than a similar outburst 
of the fiercest hatred and contempt if levelled directly at themselves. 
But the most painful feature of this Guildhall meeting was that, as 
Mr. Gladstone fairly enough insinuated, it was representative in its 
character. The great Liberal and Eadical parties spoke and acted 



928 TREASURY OF ELOQUENCE. 

through it, and emphatically expressed their opinions and feelings 
through its proceedings. The Radical party had to do violence to 
their convictions and principles in assisting Mr. Gladstonn to pass 
the most oppressive Coercion Bill ever enacted ; and yet, with his 
promises broken before their eyes, they never yet condemned, or 
even complained of, the use he had made of the dangerous and un- 
constitutional powers which that Act gave him. But as we are now 
striving for our ver}'^ lives, the time has come when they must speak 
out, and openly take a side for or against us. If they do not com- 
pel Mr. Gladstone to reverse his policy, and set Mr. Parnell and the 
other Suspects at lilierty, on what reasonable groiuids, may I ask, 
can they claim the loyalty, the allegiance, the political sympathy 
and support with which the Irish nation invariably flivored them ? 
In that event it would become our duty, as well as our interest, to 
assume an attitude of antagonism, and even of avowed, active, and 
aggressive hostility towards them. Any escape at all from Mr. 
Gladstone's government would not only be a relief, but a positive 
improvement of our condition. The great distinctive features that 
had long distinguished and characterized Liberal and Tory adminis- 
trations are now obliterated. They do not now differ even in degree, 
and where they do differ, the balance of evil is on the Liberal side. 
I would, therefore, respectfully submit to these gi-eat parties to 
pause and gauge exactly our influence and strength before they 
finally reject us. The Irish race in Ireland, England, and Scotland, 
and all over the world, is united as one man, and with the .sincerity 
and loyalty of brothers, in the great struggle in which we are now 
engaged. Although we are numerous enough to be counted by mil- 
lions, yet we are thoroughly organized and disciplined ; we are, more- 
over, sensitively attentive and obedient to the instructions issued for 
our guidance by the leaders whom we know and have confidence in. 
We can throw our united energy and strength into one great, com- 
bined movement ; we can direct that movement to any point we 
please, and act and vote solid there against the common enemy. 

I have the honor to be, faithfully yours, 

>b T. NULTY. 



/■ 



t\B' 



B^^^ 



of 



.o^iG' 



,v\e-ss 



,oa7 



037 



5A5 



